VOD's You Must See: Lords of Chaos
VOD's You Should See looks to highlight independent cinema that has a very limited theatrical release or is being directly released On Demand. The hope of this column is to help other film lovers discover an indie gem and for the film to be recognized and seen by a wider audience!
This week's film: Lords of Chaos
This review will contain some spoilers, as there is really no way around that. I will not going to really go into the specifics of major events are extremely disturbing.
Lords of Chaos is a music/true crime biopic of Norwegian Black Metal band Mayhem through the viewpoint and narration of its founding guitarist Euronymous (played here by a fantastic Rory Culkin). The beginning of the film states that this story is based on “truth, lies, and what really happened,” and that is probably the best way to look at it. That line is a clear admission that while inspired by true events this is a movie and things will be fabricated or omitted in order to make a better story. If you are morally okay with that (most biopics do this, but not with subject matter so dark) then this is definitely worth your time if you can stomach it.
Full warning, this is no Bohemian Rhapsody, Get on Up, or Love & Mercy style affair. This is, at times, a very difficult to watch and brutal film that does not turn away from its most disgusting aspects. Lords of Chaos is more about the events than it is about the music.
If you have spent any time delving into Metal then you have no doubt come across Black Metal. If you have, you most likely took one look at the corpse paint musicians playing purposefully poorly recorded brutal music and decided that this wasn’t for you and moved on. Maybe you were like me and had looked into the history of this music and got a bit uncomfortable. There is something dangerous about these bands, or at least it feels that way. Some have a history of doing some really nasty things and holding some horrifying views of the world. We are talking about everything from on stage self mutilation with animal heads on pikes to murder and church burnings. I quickly decided that this was not the kind of people I would want to give my hard earned money to.
I must admit that in recent years I have gone back to the sound and found some really incredible bands that mix blackened metal with other types of music to create something wholly new. Word of warning: always do a background check on the band members before listening as there is a chance that someone in the band is a white supremacist, a Nazi, a racist, or some other form of reprehensible garbage.
The focus of Lords of Chaos, Norwegian Black Metal, is something I don’t listen to (some of the bands are filled to the brim with the aforementioned trash humans). The genre has always had a bit of a mystery surrounding it and everyone has a different take. Just go to the message boards of this film or any black metal documentary/video on Amazon, Youtube, or elsewhere and you’ll see. The only thing that no one seems to argue is that Mayhem is a founding pillar of this genre.
Jury is out on how to define the band. To some they are true freethinking philosophers and musical geniuses with badassery to spare, here to reclaim our humanity and roots from the grip of modern society and Christianity. To others they are racist, murderous, church burning, white supremacist scum. Yet this film takes the unpopular (check those reviews on amazon) view that Mayhem are most definitely scummy while at the same time being a bunch of sad, ridiculous losers.
This film opens with Euronymous playing with his band in his parent’s basement. He dyes his hair black and looks to his little sister’s approval on the choice. He’s also got an awesome guitar tone. What is needed is a good singer and they find one in a young man named Dead. He is more extreme then any of them are, donning the corpse paint, killing animals, and even burying his clothes and digging them up before shows to get as close to death as he can. Euronymous is clearly in awe of this next level that he could never conceive of or achieve himself.
After Dead’s death Eronymous uses the opportunity to use Dead as a marketing tool to appear extreme and dangerous (though it mostly bark without bite). He uses his parent’s money to buy a property and make it into a record store that becomes the home base of Mayhem, his record label, and the whole black metal scene of Norway.
One day Kristian (a fan of Mayhem who was turned away by Euronymous as a poser because his jacket had a Scorpions patch on it) comes by the store with a demo from his one-man band Burzum and a new name, Varg. He clearly idolizes Euronymous and records an album (which his mom bankrolls) under his label. Varg follows the wild words and declarations of his idol and friend with action. When Euronymous says that they need some kind of promotion, Varg responds by burning down a historic church. Euronymous, clearly jealous, takes ownership of it saying that he told Varg to burn the church. That starts a rivalry that stretches to some truly scary places.
Lords of Chaos suggests that Mayhem started as a bunch of well to do kids with nothing to do who adopt an extreme lifestyle and slowly start to go too far. It shows how easy it to morph from kids who like to scream satanic things and shock people for fun into a movement that started flying out of control (and attracting some people who really connected to the ideology).
Honestly, of all people, director Jonas Akerlund should know as he has intimate knowledge of the genre. He is the original drummer of Swedish death metal band Bathory. Akerlund left after only a year, switched his focus to film making, and has since created a very impressive catalog of music videos.
As a director he gets excellent performances from his cast (Culkin and Cohen in particular) and fills his soundtrack with metal and a score from Sigur Ros. For me his control of tone is excellent, but many may see it as an absolute mess. Lords of Chaos finds humor in the most despicable places, snapping back and forth from absurdity to brutality. It comes from viewing his subjects as weird people rather than demons stalking some Norwegian forest.
Unfortunately, Akerlund leaves out the regressive politics this movement. Whether he believes they meant it or not, he brushes over the racist, homophobic, nationalist tendencies of the genre. Sure there are the references to Nazis and the “Hail Satan” salutes, but they are viewed as silly posturing and a nonsense mishmash of ideas. It doesn’t forgive them for it, but it never really grapples with how troubling this part of their scene was.
Similarly, by telling the story with Euronymous narrating, he is shown as somewhat sympathetic despite the awful things he is part of. Even if he was mostly trying to talk a big game and become important, he was still involved in some really heinous things that he did not try to stop. Sure we are getting the story from a wholly unreliable character, but unless you knew this story walking in you wouldn’t know what was being left out.
Don’t let any of these issues dissuade you, especially if you don’t know anything about Black Metal. It’s an insane story, and honestly the things that were added to the story are much less bizarre than the facts. If you can stomach some pretty extreme stuff, I would recommend descending into the darkness.