Lords of Chaos

‘Based on truth, lies… and what actu­al­ly hap­pened’ declares the play­ful title card at the start of direc­tor Jonas Åkerlund’s genre-hybrid music biopic Lords of Chaos, a film ​‘inspired by’ the doorstop text of the same name that doc­u­ment­ed the Nor­we­gian black met­al scene’s rise to inter­na­tion­al infamy.

In the late 1980s, a small but influ­en­tial wave of black met­al groups carved an aes­thet­ic out of being abra­sive, unpalat­able and ​‘evil’. At the heart of this foun­da­tion myth lies May­hem, the band that helped set in stone the nascent style’s look (faces daubed in black-and-white ​‘corpse’ paint), sound (loud­er, dark­er, faster, stronger) and atti­tude (anti everything).

May­hem also, active­ly and inad­ver­tent­ly, dragged the whole dark broth­er­hood scream­ing into the spot­light when their mem­bers were impli­cat­ed in a series of church burn­ings through­out Nor­way – but their place in music his­to­ry was assured when bassist Varg Vikernes (Emory Cohen) mur­dered gui­tarist, founder and genre ring­leader Eurony­mous (Rory Culkin) in August 1993.

Åkerlund has his­to­ry with met­al – he once played drums for the Swedish group Batho­ry – but he has since forged a career as a ver­sa­tile music video direc­tor, just as like­ly to work with Lady Gaga, Madon­na or Bey­once as he is with Metal­li­ca. In Lords of Chaos, too, Åkerlund isn’t wed­ded to one genre, tak­ing in grue­some, true-crime nas­ti­ness, teen-movie hedo­nism and the sort of post-mod­ern mis­chief that recalls Michael Winterbottom’s Mad­ch­ester romp 24 Hour Par­ty Peo­ple.

A cheeky, know­ing nar­ra­tion by Culkin (“We were world famous, all over Oslo”) pro­vides irony-fuelled propul­sion through May­hem and Black Metal’s ori­gin sto­ries, as Eurony­mous forms a band, par­ties hard and forges a cre­ative part­ner­ship with mor­bid-to-the-max vocal­ist Dead (Jack Kilmer). It’s all good fun – until it isn’t. Dead soon lives up to his stage name, tak­ing his own life in Mayhem’s dingy dosshouse in the coun­try in a scene that is shock­ing and stom­ach- turn­ing in its qui­et, ultra-vio­lent frankness.

When Eurony­mous dis­cov­ers the body, he incor­po­rates the tragedy into the twist­ed mythol­o­gy of May­hem itself – set­ting in motion the band’s esca­la­tion towards its self-destruc­tive des­tiny. Åkerlund presents this death unvar­nished, attempt­ing to de-fetishise the events that were quick­ly remould­ed into larg­er-than-life legend.

To do this, Lords of Chaos exor­cis­es the genre’s ​‘evil’ rep­u­ta­tion. Culkin finds an under­cur­rent of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in the role of Eurony­mous’ arch provo­ca­teur. Con­verse­ly, Cohen’s Varg is a baby- faced hang­er-on, prone to tantrums and trig­gered by anx­i­eties relat­ed to iden­ti­ty, mas­culin­i­ty and authen­tic­i­ty. In oth­er words, he’s the exact type of try-hard true believ­er who might take shock-rock doc­trine all too seriously.

For all the film’s pos­tur­ing, Åkerlund and co-screen­writer Den­nis Magnusson’s assess­ment of the Nor­we­gian black met­al scene is, ulti­mate­ly, damn­ing. There is some­thing inher­ent­ly, unde­ni­ably ridicu­lous about mid­dle class kids giv­ing the fin­ger to their Chris­t­ian-major­i­ty coun­try by dress­ing up as corpses, pos­ing in grave­yards and embrac­ing a con­fused ide­o­log­i­cal con­coc­tion of Satanism, neo-pagan­ism and Nazism. But there’s also noth­ing more dan­ger­ous than a group of young men with some­thing to prove.