After watching the film Lord Of Chaos over the summer I thought I’d finally give the book it was based on a read.

Going in I knew the film only focussed on one part of the book and that this goes into more depth around both the Norwegian Black Metal scene and it’s associated political and cultural leanings, while also exploring the musical style beyond Scandinavia.

The book can loosely be divided into three sections.

The first tells the story around the band Mayhem, and more specifically guitarist Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth and Varg ‘Count Grishnackh’ Vikerness, the second looks closer at Vikerness and his motivations for killing Aarseth and his subsequent notoriety and finally, third, a look at the wider world of black metal.

From early on the authors’, and therefore the book’s, political sway seems somewhat troubling as it is mentioned that they won’t judge the views of the people interviewed but do their best to represent them fairly. I’ll admit at first I didn’t have a problem with this, however as it went on it did become more problematic.

The first section is certainly the most engaging, but also the one I knew best, as it delves into the actual music scene around Black Metal with a well constructed history of the style from early heavy metal through Venom, Mercyful Fate, Bathory, Hellhammer, et al, up to the late 1980s and the beginning of what became Norwegian, aka second wave, black metal.

After the introduction to the genre we get the now well trodden tale of Mayhem and the ‘Black Circle’ as put together based on reports from the time and interviews with many of those involved (those in a position to give interviews at least).

Here is where things start to go awry for me as, inevitably, one of the main voices in a lot of this is Vikerness, the most notorious member of the Black Circle as the one who murdered then former bandmate Euronymous as well as it would appear (though the book is vague about his convictions) being involved in multiple church burnings and further plots.

In these early parts, while Vikerness sticks to his story of (relative) innocence, he isn’t very convincing and comes across more as the alter-ego he supposedly created for himself, both as Varg or ‘The Count’ (his real name, ironically, being Kristian), self aggrandising and mythologising in equal measure and generally being a caricature rather than anything approaching a real person.

This either says something about the state of his mental health or the view the author has of him, portraying him as something more than the murderous fascist he really comes across as.

While this first section is the most engaging if you’re really interested in the story you’ll get as much out of reading a few of the in depth articles that have been published over the years by music magazines like Metal Hammer and Terrorizer as you will in reading it here.

Making Vikerness the protagonist here then leads into the book’s second section where Moynihan and Søderlind start to explore the motivations, politics and religious views behind black metal where extensive interviews with, I feel it has be emphasised, the convicted murderer, are recounted.

As it goes on this starts to feel like the authors are themselves, in some way adherents to a kind for cult that has grown up around Vikerness as he continues spouting increasingly ridiculous and potentially dangerous rhetoric and goes almost entirely unchallenged.

There is interesting stuff in here, both in seeing into Vikerness’ mind and his views on reviving the old Norse religions, but it just goes on too long. One could argue that in this they provide Vikerness with the rope by which to metaphorically hang himself but it never quite feels like that is the intent (though he does do a decent of that anyway).

Along with this we get brief excerpts of articles and interviews with others giving some context to Vikerness but again they never quite feel like they are used to denounce his views or point out the dangerousness of them satisfactorily while other members of the music scene interviewed, such as other convicted murderer Bard ‘Faust’ Eithun do little to add very much at all.

The final section then purports to look at the scene around the world but more fixates on a series of increasingly horrific crimes supposedly linked with black metal but as they go on it becomes increasingly obvious these are more stories of mentally ill youngsters and fascist sympathisers than really anything much to do with the music side that becomes almost an afterthought — though I guess you could argue black metal as a whole suffers from this.

Following this, it’s concluding chapter, appropriately titled Ragnarok, barely mentions the music but seems to revel a little too much in the general extremist political connections once again rounding off the book with a sense authors have all but forgotten where this started was with a musical style.

On top of this it’s hard to avoid the fact that, along with many of the musicians, the writers have lost sight of the fact that what they are talking about stems from a fairly Hammer horror inspired style of music from the North East of England.

The writing style across the book also, but increasingly towards the end, feels at points somewhat amateurish and rather like we are reading a first draft without much thought for how the whole thing actually links together meaning that while there is interesting stuff in here, Lords Of Chaos is something of a slog to read and is ultimately a hugely problematic look at an already troubled corner of the heavy metal world.