Lords of Chaos

The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground

By: Michael Moynihan, Didrik Soderlind

Narrated by: Fred Berman

“The most incredible story in the history of music...a heavyweight book.” (Kerrang!)

“An unusual combination of true crime journalism, rock and roll reporting and underground obsessiveness, Lords of Chaos turns into one of the more fascinating reads in a long time.” (The Denver Post)

Lords of Chaos focuses on the scene surrounding the extreme heavy metal subgenre black metal in Norway in the early 1990s, with a focus on the string of church burnings and murders that occurred in the country around 1993. A narrative feature film based on this award-winning book has just gone into production.

©1998, 2003 Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

“The most incredible story in the history of music...a heavyweight book.” (Kerrang!)

“An unusual combination of true crime journalism, rock and roll reporting and underground obsessiveness, Lords of Chaos turns into one of the more fascinating reads in a long time.” (The Denver Post)

fascinating

started off great, then the last half feels a bit like a long tangent, but wasn't bad at all. hard to put down.

Deadly weapon

It was ok but not great a lot of the people talked about are just idiotic people looking for attention

pretty sensationalistic, which is saying a lot

i feel like this book functions less as a history of black metal, or even a documentation of the criminal elements of the early scene, and more as like a tabloid. at some point it openly abandons whatever premise it might have had and starts covering racist criminals or vaguely musically aligned murders. there's a lot of good stuff here if you're a fan of the genre, or very entertaining stuff if you're not, but it's mostly located in the first half of the book, the back half is very much filler if you're interested in "the bloody rise of the satanic metal underground"

Decent but disappointing

Author spent entirely too much time expounding on Varg Vickernes of Burzum in particular and entirely too little on other subjects and individuals. At times it felt like I was reading a biography on him, or the transcript of a speech by him, there was just that much focus on him, his life and his interviews with the author. Now I do understand he played a large role in the early Norwegian scene criminal events, but this book almost gave the impression that it all had to do with him to the exclusion of others. There are some interesting and valuable points about other bands and members especially in the first quarter to half of the book though.

Like the movie? You'll love the book!

Absolutely awesome!
I Enjoyed the Lords of chaos movie & had to read the book