LORDS OF CHAOS
ZT’s roving (or should that be romping?) reporter Martin Ives recently blagged his way into the London screening of the (controversial for more reasons than one) Lords Of Chaos film… He shares his initial thoughts on it here for ZT:
What really struck me about the screening of Lords Of Chaos I attended was the amount of straights in the audience – no dungeon dwellers here! It does kinda make sense though as there’s something distinctly middle-class about going to the cinema, having a £10 glass of Malbec and watching an independent film about teenage cults. Ironically, something that really hit home about early-90s Norway was how middle-class it was – the bank of mum and dad prevails.
The film got a suitably salacious response from the crowd, a tabloid hack’s dream some would say; during the fairly graphic [*SPOILER ALERT*] Dead suicide scene, someone had a seizure, and about half a dozen people had to take a ‘time out’ and sit outside with a glass of water. Guess I must be grimmer and more frostbitten than I look! Supposedly the bands of the era haven’t allowed their music to be used in the film, but if anything, the music’s inconsequential – the primary focus is the relationship dynamics and power struggle between Euronymous and Varg.
The film itself is a fairly brisk run-through of key events – albums/murders/arson – though I do feel Jonas Åkerlund missed a trick not leveraging the sheer scale and destruction of the church burnings, though I can surmise this was primarily borne out of budgetary constraints. I’m not gonna lie, I did get a kick out of the recreations of the iconic photoshoots of the time… Surprisingly, there’s deft touches of black comedy to offset the black metal, which might not be for everyone. Which leads to the killer question – will Lords Of Chaos achieve acceptance from the metal community? Dunno. Will it be adopted as a sleeper teenage indie cult classic akin to Romper Stomper? Potentially.
At the time of writing, it is not exactly clear when the film will be made available to a wider audience.
