Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground

Michael Moynihan &
Didrik Soderlind

If ever a book was meant to be read in tandem with *Mother Angelica: Her Life Story*, this is it. Moynihan and Soderlind trace the emergence of Norwegian black metal (touching on its rise in other countries, of course, but focusing on the antics of Norway) through both the musical and criminal aspects. By now, the whole world is probably well aware of what the supposed "Black Circle" were getting up to in Norway in the early nineties (assuming there ever really was a Black Circle; Moynihan and Soderlind don't much opine on that subject, and their interviewees give conflicting information). The authors seek here not to glorify everything that happened, but to document it in the most objective of ways, giving ample airtime to both sides of every argument. There are times when that may seem like overkill (specifically, an interview with Emperor vocalist Ihsahn is followed by two interviews with others, one of whom believes Ihsahn means everything he says, the other doesn't), but what emerges is a picture that's as balanced as it can be when the topics under discussion are not only very loud music, but also murder, grave desecration, church burning, and that sort of thing.

It's a pretty good guess that anyone who actually dives into this book is going to have at least a skeletal familiarity with both the crimes documented and the major players, but the book is written in such a way that, I believe, even those with no concept of what black metal is will quickly get everything straight in their heads. There's a pretty big cast of characters, especially early on, but they're pretty easy to discern from one another. Also, Moynihan and Soderlind don't make the mistake that so many chroniclers have of treating the music as if it's nothing more than talentless banging; they offer opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of various bands from the perspective of people who have actually spent enough time listening to the material to be able to pick such things out.

Whether you're a fan of black metal or not (for that matter, whether you're a fan of rock music at all or not), there's a great deal of interest here. This is as much a piece of true crime writing as music journalism, and seems one of the more balanced pieces of writing in either genre. Recommended.