T
he events that put the Norwegian
black metal scene on the map 25
years ago have become a staple of
music magazine Craziest Moments In
Rock-type lists, but that doesn’t make
them any less shocking. Church
burnings, multiple murders, Nazism...
This was the point where heavy metal’s
innate juvenilia suddenly got very real.
It’s both surprising and not that
surprising that it’s taken this long for
someone to bring the story to the big
screen. Surprising because this twisted
tale of youthful rivalry ticks all the
boxes that usually make for good
cinema: rebellion, controversy, a fair
few buckets of gore and, ultimately,
tragedy. Unsurprising because Mayhem
rehearsing Chainsaw Gutsfuck in a shitty
garage is hardly Queen prancing around
to Radio Gaga at Live Aid. But irrespective
of musical tastes, Lords Of Chaos is
a tremendous film that tempers its
morbid fascination in the subject with
a cast-iron understanding of the story
and an unlikely sympathy for most of
the people involved.
A quick recap for anyone who wasn’t
paying attention at the time: ambitious
and charismatic Mayhem guitarist
Oystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth (played
here by Rory ‘Younger brother of
Macaulay’ Culkin) wills a brand-newscene-come-cult-of-personality into
existence, drawing a small army of like-
minded teenage malcontents into his
orbit. The suicide of Mayhem’s original
singer, the aptly named Dead, can’t
derail his plans, although the
appearance of shy outsider Kristian
‘Varg’ Vikernes – soon to rename
himself Count Grishnackh, and the
nearest this movie has to a cackling
villain – sees matters escalate rapidly
from satanic posturing to church
burnings and eventually to – spoiler
alert! – murder.
It would be easy to overcook the
story’s in-built sensationalism, but
Swedish director Jonas Akerlund
captures both the insanity and the
mundanity of the story. Akerlund was
behind music videos for such A-listers
as Metallica, The Prodigy and Madonna,
but he was also an original member of
proto-black metal pioneers Bathory,
giving him a connection, insight and eye
for detail that others would lack.
Norway might provide the backdrop
for Lords Of Chaos, but this is a universal
story, albeit one with a grisly suicide,
several church burnings and a couple of
murders. You didn’t get that with
Bohemian Rhapsody.
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Dave EverleyMod Art
Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson
OMNIBUS PRESS
Townshend in a Union Jack
jacket? You betcha.
Quoting Marshall
McLuhan in Mod
Art’s introduction,
Paul Anderson- modernist
scholar and author of the
excellent Mods: The New Religion - kicks off this weighty coffee-
table tome with the words: “Art
is anything you can get away
with.” And in many ways,
anything with any style that
originally appeared concurrent
to the original mod era – which
for argument’s sake (and there
will be arguments, because mod,
while a broad church, is also
a highly disputatious inexact
science) we’ll call 1958-68 – will
be claimed as ‘mod’ if social
historians can get away with it.
Be it haircut, shirt, guitar lick,
pep pill, scooter, heel, shop front,
beach fight, model, mini (skirt or
Cooper), Who, Hi-Watt or
swimwear, mockney, Hockney,
Blake or Riley. It’s a mod, mod,
mod, mod world. And the first
fabulous chunk of Mod Art, the
bit that focuses on this initial
glorious, perpetually inventive
decade, is fabulously engrossing,
with sharp style leaping from
every page. All is new, all is mod,
all is perfectly rendered, all is art.
Post-Quadrophenia, after the
once-extinct species rise again
aprés punk? Not so much.
There’s a lot of it, because this is
our author’s era, and although
the artefacts are more numerous
they’re all a bit cut-and-paste,
post-punk, touched by the hand
of Mark P and – here’s the
eternal dichotomy – nostalgic
and backward-glancing. And
when the shock of the new is
replaced by an attention-to-
period authenticity, art is
reduced to hand-me-down
graphics. That said, while 90s
BritPop’s high-profile affiliation
with BritArt isn’t considered as
relevant as West Country ‘sixties
night’ flyers, and there’s a whole
lotta Weller, this is a beautiful
thing and highly recommended
for (argumentative) mods of
any era.
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Ian Fortnam
I Talk Too Much
Francis Rossi with
Mick Wall LITTLE, BROWN
True confessions.
The genius of Status Quo- always unhip, often unloved
- lies in both their music and
their refusal to stop; even the
death of Rick Parfitt in 2016 has
done little to halt their continued
career, with live albums, acoustic
collections and tours. And
Francis Rossi, Parfitt’s oldest
collaborator, is back as a solo
artist, with a spoken-word tour,
a vigorously excellent album
with Aquostic collaborator
Hannah Rickard, and an
autobiography, written with
Mick Wall.
I Talk Too Much isn’t so much
a warts-’n’-all book as a warts-
’n’-not-much-else story, written
with Rossi’s unique flair for
bracing candour. Of his first
wedding night, he recalls: “She
was a virgin and I actually had
trouble getting my willy into her,”
while his first realisation that
cocaine might be a bad thing is:
“I looked down and there was
the bloody membrane of my
septum, like a chunk of chopped
liver on the floor of the shower.”
But this honesty serves the book
brilliantly, as the stories of Quo,
of fame, of disaster and of Rossi
and Parfitt are laid out in frank,
stark detail. You don’t
necessarily come out loving
Rossi, but you do admire his
ability to tell the truth.
An honest book, essential for
fans and great reading for
anyone else.
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David QuantickMy Years
With Townes
Va n Z a ndt
Harold Eggers BACKBEAT
To Live’s To Fly.
Harold Eggers,
a Vietnam War
veteran, reckons
the post-traumatic
stress disorder he
suffered was
a perfect qualification for dealing
with Townes Van Zandt, the
prodigiously talented singer-
songwriter who spent some 30
years drinking himself to death.
Townes lived his life as if he was
in a war zone, and it took all of
Eggers’s damaged survival skills
to cope.
Over 20 years, going from
road manager to business
manager, Eggers became the
closest person to Van Zandt and
at times they shared an almost
dangerous co-dependency. He
watched Townes’s relentless
self-destruction, along with the
incomparable musical genius
that was just as unfathomable,
and he lays bare the bipolar
behaviour that drove him. More
disturbing was the way he would
subconsciously sabotage every
opportunity to achieve theThe Norwegian black metal scene gets its
own Bohemian Rhapsody.ST
UF
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BOOKS^ &^ D
VDsLords Of Chaos
Dir: Jonas Akerlund ARROW FILMS