Lords of Chaos (2018)

Dean March 13, 2019

★ 5/10

This movie felt more like a comedy/parody than the serious one.

SgtKowalski March 27, 2019

★ 10/10

A very well-made thing, in the middle between “lad-film” and “psycho-drama”. However, there’s a layer missing, and I don’t mean “where’s muh black metal soundtrack” or “Varg was right” or “but there was deep philosophy!!!111” or some such. What I mean is the following: in the film “Generation P” (2011), first there’s one moment where the central character eats fly agaric mushrooms in the woods and trips heavily, and then a second moment where he takes acid at home and ancient Sumerian gods start appearing in the walls. If you take these two moments from Generation P, and graft then onto Lords of Chaos—then this would provide an underlying narrative depth behind certain impulses of those involved and the directions taken by them. Otherwise it’s like watching a film about Charles Manson, or Jimi Hendrix, or Black Sabbath, or the Ramones, wher…

Stephen Campbell August 16, 2019

★ 7/10

**_Equal parts funny and harrowing; an enjoyable "true story"_** >_Violent torture_ > _Death has arrived_ > _Armageddon_ > _Terror and fright_ > _Bleeding corpses_ > _Rotting decay_ > _Anarchy_ > _Violent torture_ > _Antichrist_ > _Lucifer_ > _Son of Satan_ > _Pure Fucking Armageddon_ > _Pure Fucking Armageddon!_ - Mayhem; "Pure Fucking Armageddon" (written by Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth; Kjetil Manheim; Jørn "Necrobutcher" Stubberud; Sven Erik "Maniac" Kristiansen; Eirik "Messiah" Norheim); from the EP, _Deathcrush_ (1987) Authenticity is perhaps the most important currency in music. Bands who can legitimately say "_it's all about the music_" and actually back that claim up are automatically head and shoulders above their less authentic rivals, who may sing a good game, but who live a very different life. Think of how fake and preening Gun…

Gimly April 3, 2020

★ 7/10

_Lords of Chaos_ is not a Mayhem biopic. If you're looking for that, or if you're looking for a film about the rise of Black Metal in Norway, look entirely elsewhere. This is - at its surface - basically just a film about Euronymous and his relationship with Dead, and then with Varg. But it's really about "edge". About the kvlt of black metal that was arguably more vital to its identity than the actual music. About evil for evil's sake alone. This brutality that from the outside looking in is almost as cartoonish as it is despicable. I was born too late to be in the real thick of the black metal scene at its peak (and living in the Southern Hemisphere didn't help much either), but when I was coming up in the 2000s, the black metal scene might not have been thriving, but it was there, and I was a part of it. Edginess took precedence over everything else. It was a huge part of my ident…

tmdb28039023 August 28, 2022

★ 1/10

Lords of Chaos makes me channel my inner John Cusack as I wonder, do Norwegians listen to black metal because they are miserable, or are they miserable because they listen to black metal? As for me, I know I was miserable because I was watching this movie. Lords of Chaos is a semi-fictional (though ‘barely-factual’ might be a better description) account of the Norwegian black metal scene of the early 1990s, told from the perspective of seminal band Mayhem co-founder Euronymous (Rory Culkin). The film is directed and co-written by a Swede (Jonas Åkerlund), set in Oslo, has Norwegian characters supposedly based on real Norwegian people, and deals with a type of music that is to Oslo what grunge is to Seattle – so of course all the main characters, who have names like Pelle Ohlin or Jan Axel Blomberg, are played by American actors speaking fluent English with American accents. …