Label: Umbrella Entertainment
Region Code:Region-FREE NTSC
Rating: R
Duration: 112 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Jonas Åkerlund
Cast: Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Jack Kilmer, Sky Ferreira
Back in the early 90's I was doing a lame xeroxed metal and punk zine, and it was through that then that I received a promotional CD of black metal band Mayhem's 'De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas' CD, released on Century Media black metal imprint Century Black. I recall it arrived with a press release mentioning a bit about real-life murder and church burnings involving members of the band. It all seemed a bit too dramatic for me, I just wanted to get my metal on, I didn't need metal-heads burning churches and murdering each other to prove something, you now? I've never been much into black metal to be honest, the album was good for what it was, but it wasn't something I was gonna play with any sort of regularity.
Now years later we have a film portraying those events from the early 90's with Norwegian metal band Mayhem being formed by a group of friends practicing in the basement of guitarist Euronymous (Rory Culkin, Welcome to Willits), they basically invent the black metal sub-genre of metal. They acquire a vocalist by way of self-destructive Swede Per Yngve Ohlin (aka "Dead") (Jack Kilmer, The Stanford Prison Experiment) who turns out to be the perfect front man for the dark metallers, with him burying his stage clothes in the ground for days prior to playing shows, huffing the vapors of a rotting crow from a plastic bag, and cutting himself with shards of broken glass at gigs to the delight of macabre-loving fans. Living up to his self-destructive way the singer eventually blows his brains out with a shotgun in the band's practice house, where Euronymous discovers his corpse, taking pictures of the grisly scene and snatching a few shards of obliterated skull as souvenirs.
With the suicide of the singer Mayhem goes on hiatus, with Euronymous opening up a specialty record shop and beginning a fledgling black metal label, which eventually signs Kristian “Varg” Vikernes (Emory Cohen, Netflix's The OA) who makes next-level black metal under the name of Burzum. Varg is a guy who was once a poser outsider now turned into a malicious black metaller, with Euronymous and Varg constantly out to outdo the other through outrageous statements and violent acts. Euronymous is more of profane statement sort of guy and finds it difficult to keep up with Varg who, taking a cue from Euronymous, begins a campaign of burning of churches in the area, leading to a deadly rivalry that ends in a brutal murder.
It's a strange tale based on truth but certainly one that's embellished for dramatic effect, and one that funnily enough asks you to feel a bit sympathetic towards a man who clearly was no saint, but who at least on film, begins to find a better way in life when he falls in love by way of Ann-Marit (Sky Ferreira, The Green Inferno). It's all a bit ridiculous but it has that certain 'based on fact' charm of the Coen. Bros. film Fargo, but punctuated with some real grisly violence.
The film is solidly entertaining, it's certainly the most authentic black-metal movie I've ever watched, with strong performances from Rory Caulkin and Emory Cohen as black-metallers engaged in a power struggle for black metal supremacy among their ridiculously dark metal community. I like the narrative style and structure of the film, the metal music soundtrack is fierce, and the violence when it arrives is surprisingly dark and grisly. This would make a solid double-feature with kiwi horror-comedy Deathgasm or Trick Or Treat, not that it's a comedy but that it's a metal film that is not without a sad sort of humor about it, there's a certain black metal humor happening here, which makes for an uneven but ultimately entertaining watch.
The film arrives on region-free DVD from Umbrella Entertainment framed in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) with surround Dolby Digital presentation. It looks and sounds good in standard-definition, but offers no extras.
