Lords of Chaos is not a Mayhem biopic. If you're looking for that, or if you're looking for a film about the rise of Black Metal in Norway, look entirely elsewhere. This is - at its surface - basically just a film about Euronymous and his relationship with Dead, and then with Varg. But it's really about "edge". About the kvlt of black metal that was arguably more vital to its identity than the actual music. About evil for evil's sake alone. This brutality that from the outside looking in is almost as cartoonish as it is despicable.
I was born too late to be in the real thick of the black metal scene at its peak (and living in the Southern Hemisphere didn't help much either), but when I was coming up in the 2000s, the black metal scene might not have been thriving, but it was there, and I was a part of it. Edginess took precedence over everything else. It was a huge part of my identity, and it was the entire identity of some of the people I spent my time with. We never killed anyone, of course, but it got dark, and the music did honestly take a backseat to that edginess. Lords of Chaos does the same. The music takes a backseat. Lords of Chaos is so not about Mayhem in fact, that I honestly can't remember if Hellhammer, (garbage human, strong contender for world's best living drummer, and member of Mayhem for over 30 cumulative years) ever even actually got a line in this thing.
I remember being young, and getting sick of proving myself to people whose whole idea of what made a black metal band count as "trve" enough was the fact that I'd never listened to them. Eventually, I told one such a fellow that the best black metal band in history was Twisted Sister, and then he never bothered trying to "outrank" my dedication to black metal again. What would be the point at that stage? Lords of Chaos seems to view black metal in pretty much the same way. Twisted Sister could be the best black metal band in history for all that Lords of Chaos actually displays about the subject.
But after all that, you know why I still liked Lords of Chaos? Maybe some of it was just nostalgia, but for the most part, it's that there was actual characters in it. Sure the characters were, to a man, all assholes. And they may not have strongly resembled the people they were based on (except for the asshole part, that seems fair). But I was still invested in them. It wasn't just a mad rush to get from one notable point in a band's history to the next. There were people in it who interacted with each other. And that makes this the best musical biopic I've seen in years (despite not actually being one.)
70%
-Gimly