Have you ever wondered why Count Grishnackh stabbed his friend and fellow metal visionary Euronymous in the head? (He died.) Or maybe who sparked the burning of more than 100 historic churches across Scandinavia, the home to reason, socialism, and blondes? Well, fear not—or, rather, be very, very afraid—the answer is out there.
It’s been twelve years since Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind published Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground, but the story it tells is as disturbing and fascinating as it was when the mayhem that was at the core of the fledgling Norwegian black metal scene unfolded in the Norwegian and international press. Comprised of dozens of interviews with experts and the evildoers themselves, hundreds of hours of research, and a wealth of photos, Lords of Chaos is a comprehensive survey and tell-all of the gruesome world of black metal.
Lords of Chaos showcases the murder, intrigue, Satanic ritual and muddled belief systems many bands professed, and never ending quest to be as evil as possible that were the obsessions of early Norwegian black metallers. Oh, and they played music. If you’re looking for a book to get you in the Halloween spirit, and I don’t mean the candy and sexy nurse costume kind (unless you mean these nurses), consider Lords of Chaos. If you don’t like reading, a movie based on Lords of Chaos is in production.
The book begins with a chronological survey of dark metal, hitting early luminaries (black holes?) like Venom, Mercyful Fate, and Bathory, then moving on to the likes of Slayer and Celtic Frost before getting to the real bad boys, the Norwegians. It’s a history lesson that can only partly explain the extreme turn that the genre took, when words were turned into deeds and musicians into criminals. Euronymous, the founder of Mayhem, the original black metal band, is largely responsible for the style that became the black metal look, attitude, and sound. As the founder of the genre, he opened a record store in Oslo called Helvete, or, in English, Hell, that served as the epicenter for the scene.
In what would be a recurring theme for black metal, Euronymous is perhaps more famous for his exploits off stage than for his performances on it and Lords of Chaos spares no detail in describing the brutal deeds he and other black metal musicians performed. Not to give too much away, let’s just say he made a necklace from pieces of his bandmate’s skull after he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. His name was, appropriately, “Dead.” Euronymous also cooked a piece of Dead’s brain in a stew and ate it so that he could say he was a cannibal. Not your everyday idea of street cred.
If that sounds crazy, and it should, Varg Vikernes, aka Count Grishnackh, the man behind Burzum, may have one-upped Euronymous when he killed him. It’s a long story of jealousy and intrigue and Lords of Chaos leaves no stone unturned. Varg Vikernes would gain further notoriety as an enigmatic figure thought to be responsible for a number of church burnings across Norway, including the burning of the Fantoft stave church, a church built in 1150 and considered a Norwegian national landmark. His actions inspired others to emulate the church burnings and over one hundred churches were burned across Scandinavia in the 1990’s, with black metal bands and fans claiming responsibility for more than fifty burnings between 1992 and 1996. Lords of Chaos cites the press and interviews police investigators, ministers, and psychologists to paint a picture of the havoc that black metal spread across normally tranquil Scandinavia and the depraved minds that fueled it.
Lords of Chaos discusses black metal music, too, and highlights the talent and innovation of black metal musicians. Black metal is strangely hypnotic, often beautiful with deceiving classically inspired melodies, and is enjoyable for fans of other types of heavy metal. Shrieks, blasting double-bass drums, and whiny three-chord guitar riffs are the signature sound.
This sound, though, as the book’s focus demonstrates, is usually second fiddle to the actions of a few particularly evil musicians. In fact, many early seminal black metal bands played only a handful of shows, if any, and the entire scene was estimated to contain only a few hundred people. Only in the aftermath of extensive press coverage did black metal become internationally visible and by this point, predictably, the scene was considered in many ways dead, with a number of key players being either imprisoned or actually dead.
Lords of Chaos has received criticism for serving as a mouthpiece for Varg Vikernes, who later developed a fascination with nationalistic paganism and Nazism during his twenty-one year prison sentence for the murder of Euronymous, the longest term possible in Norway. The way Lords of Chaos handles Vikernes and other extremists seems objective, but in dealing with characters like Vikernes deplorable subjects are inevitably topics of discussion and merely offering the accused a venue for conversation seems to have angered some critics. For whatever criticism Lords of Chaos has received, it has been more than counterbalanced by significant praise from diverse reviewers.
While Lords of Chaos focuses on the violence surrounding black metal, it also takes time to laud bands like Ulver and Emperor, in particular Emperor’s vocalist Ishahn, for their musical accomplishments and philosophically complex theories on Satanism and Paganism. Whereas many early black metal bands seemed to be acting in ways that they simply thought best to piss people off, worshipping Satan and burning churches as a way to make Mom and Dad mad, as it were, Ishahn and Ulver developed a more cogent belief system not centered on violence or blatant acts of destruction. Fittingly, Ulver and Emperor continued to have long and successful careers.
The heyday of Norwegian black metal is long gone, and some say that black metal died with it. The label “black metal” is controversial for bands that profess to play it today and they are often grouped with the violence of the early nineties in the eyes of those unfamiliar with the genre
; the two often seem inextricably linked. There is no question, though, that the black metal sound lives on. If you want to hear it yourself, Watain, a talented group of Swedes, is coming to the US for a tour in November. They play Santos in NYC on December 2nd.
; the two often seem inextricably linked. There is no question, though, that the black metal sound lives on. If you want to hear it yourself, Watain, a talented group of Swedes, is coming to the US for a tour in November. They play Santos in NYC on December 2nd.
Oh, in case you were wondering how Vikernes, aka Count Grishnackh, is doing in jail, he just recently got parole. Great.