5. Lords Of Chaos
In the 1990s, the black metal movement briefly meant something more than just screaming guitars and growled vocals. LORDS OF CHAOS was the title of a 1998 book on the phenomenon by Michael Moynihan of US neo-folk band Blood Axis and Norwegian rock journalist Didrik Soderlind, which drew much of its inspiration from the latters homeland. It was in the Oslo black metal scene that a competitive sense of how to become the most authentically evil Satanist took hold. Burnings of medieval stave churches briefly became a phenomenon, reputedly encouraged by Euronymous, vocalist of the band Mayhem and proprietor of black metal record label Deathlike Silence; tragicomically, a bandmate who called himself Dead decided he truly didnt belong to this world and blew his head off with a shotgun. After the August 1992 murder of a gay man in a park, the band Emperors drummer, Faust, was charged with the crime which seemed of a tone with his neo-Nazi leanings. But it was the 1993 arrest of Count Grishnackh who recorded under the name Burzum and had renamed himself after an orc in THE LORD OF THE RINGS that took the madness to its peak. For Grishnackh (or Kristian Vikernes, to cite his rather ironic given name) had repeatedly stabbed his former friend Euronymous to death and was allegedly found in possession of 150lbs of dynamite. Michael Moynihan imbued his telling of these events in LORDS OF CHAOS with a mythic significance, seeing the so-called Black Metal Circles acts as a revolt against European liberalism and a return to pagan instinct. Part of the 1990s US apocalypse culture, the young writer/musician personified an occultist/radical rightwing axis; as his onetime mentor, musical experimentalist and provocateur Boyd Rice, had found a personal hero in Manson, so Moynihan tended to lionise Vikernes as a man of action. Its a disputable stance as rumours about the Grishnackh-Euronymous spat have suggested more mundane causes, but it lent the book (published by underground hipsters Feral House) an undeniable power. It may have been this inherent controversy that attracted Tokyo filmmaker Sion Sono director of the TOKYO TRIBES manga adaptation and disturbing art film STRANGE CIRCUS to the project, or pretty boy TWILIGHT vampire Jackson Rathbone to audition for the part of Vikernes. It may also have been similar factors that doomed it outright. As on the trailer poster above, LORDS OF CHAOS was expected to see its premiere in 2010. There may have been many obstacles (including finance), but one likely factor was opposition from an unexpected quarter: Varg Vikernes (the ambient metal artist formerly known as Grishnackh, his adopted forename the Norwegian for wolf) had been released from prison in late 2009, after serving 15 years of his maximum 21-year sentence. Moving ever further to the right, the Odinist (worshipper of the Norse gods) is a long-time racial separatist and white supremacist. Despite Moynihans sympathy for his resurgent atavism, Vikernes damned his book as an inaccurate cash-in. (He was even more disgruntled by the interview in my friend Gavin Baddeleys satanic rock study Lucifer Rising, conducted when he was on bail for burning churches: I dont want to use words like Mordor because it could be dismissed as a joke, hes quoted as saying of his LORD OF THE RINGS influence, sensing hes on the verge of sending himself up.) In 2013 Vikernes and his wife, long domiciled in rural France, were arrested for a suspected terrorist plot but released when it was confirmed that the firearms they held were licensed. Hes out there, hes armed and hes p*ssed off it sounds like a cheesy tagline on a movie poster, but it just so happens to be true.
Twilight co-star Jackson Rathbone was pencilled in to play orc-loving black metallist/killer Count Grishnackh (thats the Count on the right).