Something a bit different in our series of gems from the archives – but no less deserving of an entry: the first book attempting to give an overview of the phenomenon called black metal. The book by Michael Moynihan (of Blood Axis fame) and Didrik Søderlind has its shortcomings – some of them pretty egregious – but its stature as a cult item in the canon of black metal cannot be denied.

So, Lords Of Chaos, published in 1998, is an overview of the then rather young genre known as black metal. Focusing heavily on the Norwegian scene, Lords Of Chaos is an interesting point-in-time type of document: the worst excesses and controversial events had already taken place, but one cannot speak of much wisdom of hindsight, considering the ink on some of the court verdicts had just about dried when the duo of Moynihan and Søderlind conducted interviews for the book.

I read this book back near the turn of the millennium in my teens. My heart burned for black metal, and I earnestly felt that it was, or at least potentially could be the medium for an antichristian crusade that would crush the invading christian religion. People like Euronymous of Mayhem and Varg Vikernes of Burzum seemed not only leaders of inspiring musical entities, but trailblazers on this path to a new, dark future. The context of that era in black metal – not just teenage me – was one of taking the violent, murderous, church burning, medieval rhetoric of black metal at face value. And as such, the even mythologizing portrayal of black metal in Lords of Chaos at face value.

Returning to the book now, a quarter of a century later, it’s easy to see that Moynihan and Søderlind weren’t writing about satanic-pagan warrior philosophers ushering the world through violence to a new dawn. No, they were writing about a group of excitable young people, who through various more or less incidental reasons happened upon satanism (with or without quotation marks – you decide!) and egged each other on to ever greater extremes with some tragic results. (I’m not necessarily talking about the burned and vandalized churches.)

And, of course, about a bunch of youngsters who did make some classic, iconing and trailblazing music.

Of the interviewees, Varg Vikernes has later disowned the book, in his typical manner saying it is riddled with errors and inaccuracies. This seems to happen so frequently to Mr. Vikernes that one has to wonder if it isn’t so much that he is being misquoted and taken out of context as it is he himself frequently misspeaking. I mean, I haven’t really found out how exactly Lords of Chaos misquotes him. But I understand Vikernes’ distaste for the book: it is very sensationalist, seeking to fan up flames and paint a very purpose driven, mythical picture of the black metal scene.

Certainly, this was an easy perspective to take: the Norwegians had made sure to provide plenty of ammunition for sensationalist takes with their provocative statements in interviews. Full of adolescent bravado, they’d spoken of war, terror, devotion to Satan and adored violence and abuse in all forms, causing uproar and mayhem in their native Norway. Combined with the fact that they actually walked the walk at least to some extent – churches burned, people died – this was a sensation ready for the tabloids.

However, in presenting black metal as some purposeful rebellion and a movement of escalating antichristian terror, Lords of Chaos jumps from the realm of reality to the realm of fancy. Sure enough, in the interviews made for this book, even some of the band members distancing themselves from the “activism” of the so-called “Black Circle” are filled with the black-and-white hubris of youth in their absolute, elitistic remarks; and perhaps the young age of the authors themselves can also be seen as an excuse (both were well under 30 at the time); but at any rate, critical writers should have been able to see what was what and take a more critical, nuanced approach.

The book also gives a pedestal to the artists to weave their fanciful image of themselves and the genre they represent without seriously challenging or questioning them. I’m not talking about how Moynihan and Søderlind fail to be critical towards the questionable and reprehensible opinions many of the interviewees voice – adult readers don’t need the authors to point unsavoury opinions – but in how they offer no attempt at objective perspective in describing many of the events and persons that are part of the story of Norwegian black metal. As such, for example, the book allows Vikernes to define the image of Euronymous and helps proliferate the certainly very biased and jaded views Vikernes had of the former friend he ended up murdering.

In fact, Lords of Chaos appears positively enamoured with Vikernes, painting him as the sole central force of Norwegian black metal at the time of writing, giving inordinate amount of attention to him. In the process, they entirely skip or merely mention in passing a great many significant acts, narrowing the view given on Norwegian black metal. Acts like Satyricon, Dødheimsgard and Dimmu Borgir don’t exist on the pages of the book, and bands like Immortal are only given a passing mention. Darkthrone is interesting only insofar as they made politically volatile statements.

And black metal outside of Norway? Apart from Absurd, another band where tabloid controversy was all to easy to drum up, it almost doesn’t exist as far as Moynihan and Søderlind are considered. Cradle Of Filth and a few others get passing mentions, but even the Swedish scene is reduced to a few lines of text. Blasphemy, Abigor, Beherit, Impaled Nazarene, Sarcofago, Tormentor et al.? Not worth the time of day here. In this, Lords of Chaos is certainly guilty in the highest degree of falsely putting the sole focus of 90’s black metal in Norway, like nothing of importance would have happened elsewhere. This too, inadvertedly, is an all too accurate depiction of the times.

As a study into a fringe musical genre, I would say it’s generous to call Lords of Chaos flawed. Its detractors have called it sensationalistic and tabloidesque, and they are right. It drums satanic panic stereotypes to present a sensationalistic, one-dimensional overview of a musical genre. Not only that, at times Lords of Chaos is wildly unfocused as well: at one point, it dedicates pages and pages on US youth groups and/or cults who engaged in violent behaviour, most of them with absolutely no links, or tenuous links at best, to the subject matter of the book. And when the book strays into the realm of metaphysical conjecture, it also crosses well into the realm of clumsy, pretentious pap.

But as undeniable as the shortcomings of the book are, so is its iconic status. This stems not so much from it’s literary merits, but from it being in the right time at the right place. I would venture to say it is entirely unwitting and incidental that Lords of Chaos manages to document not so much the fledgling scene as it was in the late 90’s, but how it wanted itself to be seen as; how throngs and throngs of upstart metalheads bought into the imagery the bands projected, and made black metal into a satanic rebellion against the establishment. Granted, a thoroughly teenaged rebellion that didn’t ultimately amount to much in terms of anything concrete, but in time did evolve, mature, grow up and help shape many of the modern occultural currents.

And that’s how Lords of Chaos should be read in this age: not as an objective outsider look at black metal, but as a flawed and subjective to a fault reading of it – one that in being just that accidentally captures a narrow but significant slice of black metal in the late 90’s.

There most certainly are better books on black metal out there nowadays. Books that get more of the facts straight and reach a degree of objectivity. Books with more focus and less pretentious excursions to metaphysical dead end paths. But Lords of Chaos has one thing going above all of these: it was there first. Flawed as it is, Lords of Chaos is the first serious attempt to write a popular cultural analysis of black metal.

And, it has of course to be said: in 1998, there wasn’t an ample body of popular cultural literature to draw inspiration from. I’m sure it’s entirely correct to say Moynihan and Søderlind had to make a lot of the approach up as they went. But even so, many of the flaws are due to half-hearted attemps given to objectivity and keeping a distance from the subject matter, and as such cannot ble glossed over.

Still, all things considered, re-reading the book some 25 years later was both fun and elucidating. It reminded me of the youthful seriousness with which I once upon a time took even the worst excesses of black metal – in how the grim satanic crusade was real, or at least I wanted it to be real, for a teenaged me (and I certainly wasn’t alone in this). It reminded me of the absolute passion with which I approached black metal back then.

And, in doing so, it made me reflect that maybe some things to get better as you get older.

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In From The Vaults we take a dive into the record collection at Only Death Is Real HQ and write about about items of iconic stature or personal significance; rarities and oddities from the archives; obscure gems that deserve more attention; classics of yore deserving of a moment in the limelight; and so on.