In terms of my favorite music
genres, black metal is somewhere near the bottom, but nevertheless I always had
a morbid fascination with it. Ever since I first heard about it in the documentary
Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, I’ve
been enthralled with this music scene that took things to extremes that no one
has taken them to or since. They went out of their way to make themselves as
alienating and unlistenable as possible, and unlike bands like Black Sabbath,
Slayer and Venom, who used dark, Satanic imagery in their lyrics and live shows
but didn’t truly believe what they were singing, they meant every word of what
they said. It was a constant race to be darker and eviler than the band that
came before you. For some, that meant covering yourself in corpse paint and
festooning the stage with pig entrails. For others, it meant burning down
churches and murder.
Lords
of Chaos, both the film and the book it was based on, explores the
black metal scene through one of its most infamous bands: Mayhem. Founded in Oslo,
Norway the mid-80’s by Oystein “Euronymous” Aarseth (Rory Culkin), they set out to make the darkest, edgiest, hardest,
loudest music out there. If it offends the senses, cements their reputation and
grew their brand, he was all for it. This led to some characters that would
simultaneously build them up and tear them down. The first was a deeply
troubled kid named “Dead” (Jack Kilmer), who Euronymous brought on as Mayhem’s vocalist. His
strange habits, twisted stage theatrics and obsession with death made for a
good show but hid some deep-rooted mental issues. Shortly after Dead blows his
brains out with a shotgun, Euronymous meets and recruits a fellow black metal musician named Varg Vikernes (Emory Cohen),
who challenges him to prove that he’s not all talk by committing a series of church
arsons that quickly spirals out of control.
Much like the music itself, Lords of Chaos is a very
love-it-or-hate-it affair, and where you land on that spectrum will very much
depend on your opinion on that subject. The story of Mayhem has been a controversial
topic from the beginning, not just for all the bloodshed, but because there’s
been a lot of debate about what did or didn’t happen. And there’s a good reason
for that: It’s because (spoilers) two of its three major players are dead and the
surviving third one is an unreliable narcissistic bigot. The movie even opens
with the disclaimer that it’s about “the truth, the lies, and what really happened,”
letting you know upfront that you should take its credibility with a grain of
salt. Director Jonas Akerlund was the original drummer for Bathory, one of the
early progenitors of black metal, so he was there when all of this went down,
and probably understands better than any other director the headspace these people
were in. And while it’s an affectionate portrait, it’s not exactly a flattering
one. The movie frames Euronymous and his inner circle as a group of young,
belligerent, nihilistic idiots who ended up taking themselves way too seriously
in all the wrong ways.
Because of this tonal
dissonance, it plays out like a coming-of-age film that morphs into a true crime
thriller, sometimes bordering on horror. Scenes of the band partying will
immediately be followed by a genuinely hard to watch scene of one of its
members committing suicide. And then that
is followed up by one of the members finding the body, and instead of
calling the police, he takes pictures and uses them as cover art for the next
album. The movie hints that Euronymous may have been haunted by Dead’s suicide,
but since he’s not here to confirm it, it takes some creative liberties. One
creative liberty I am a bit flummoxed by was the decision to a new character by
giving Euronymous a girlfriend (Sky Ferreira), even though Euronymous never had
a girlfriend as far as we know. I think she was added to make the Black Circle
less of a sausage fest, but she has no agency and adds nothing to the story. But if you can overlook the cast of English speaking Americans playing Norwegians, then this shouldn't be much of a barrier.
One fact it highlights that
most documentaries and articles tend to glance over is that they were pretty
privileged. The main reason Euronymous was able to own his own record store and
label in his early 20’s was because his parents payed for them. Before Dead
blows his brains out, he gets a message from his dad saying he got accepted
into university. And the inciting incident that sparked Euronymous and Varg’s
rivalry? Euronymous making fun of Varg for wearing a Scorpions patch. It’s one
thing to hear about this group of freaks who burned down churches and made the
world’s most brutal music, but it’s another thing to wipe away the corpse paint
and see that they’re all just a bunch of dumb kids from the suburbs. That’s probably
the biggest takeaway from all of this: that even though they caused so much
destruction and created a thriving scene that’s still going to this day, they
were all just a bunch of posers.
Bottom line, Lords of Chaos is an interesting take on
one of rock’s most fascinating stories. Since it’s decided to incorporate “the
truth, the lies, and what really happened”, there will inevitably be a lot of
contention among the die-hard metal elitists (Varg has repeatedly trashed the
movie on his YouTube channel, which I’m not sharing because fuck that guy), but
as an outsider looking in, it certainly gave me a lot to think about.
7/10
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