It's a little jarring at first, but you quickly acclimate yourself to it, and it ultimately proves far less distracting than an actor with a God-awful accent. Personally, I find this far less distracting than everyone speaking English but with Scandinavian inflexions. Another aesthetic element worth mentioning is that the actors all speak in English with their own accents. I'm not sure if it's the length of time it takes (the scene runs over three minutes), if it was Mattias Eklund's sound design wherein we can hear the knife cutting flesh, if it was the lack of cutaways, or if it was the close-ups of the wounds, but I found the scene brilliant, but harrowing. Ekberg and sparsely edited by Rickard Krantz, with the suicide really getting under my skin.
All three scenes are shot matter-of-factly by cinematographer Pär M. And in easily the funniest scene in the film, as Euronymous and Varg wait outside a recording studio, a group of elderly women emerge, with Euronymous running up to them and growling, "Hail Satan!" From an aesthetic point of view, the film features three notable scenes two murders and one suicide. Euronymous complains of Christianity, "they're oppressing us with their kindness and their goodness". An impassioned speech about the nature of black metal is interrupted by someone being told their kebab is ready. Describing their style, Euronymous proudly declares, "when people hear our music, we want them to commit suicide." Later on, he admits, "all this evil and dark crap was supposed to be fun." He has to borrow his parents' car to get anywhere (it's difficult to be taken seriously as a purveyor of terror when you're in your dad's Volvo). It's in relation to this manufactured image that much of the film's humour is to be found.
Whereas some of the others saw evil in a literal sense, Euronymous saw it in terms of branding. In this sense, the story is primarily about image and marketing. Åkerlund isn't especially interested in valorising black metal, with the majority of the film designed to chip away at its image of evil. However, as Varg becomes more and more extreme, a power struggle develops between the two. After Dead commits suicide, Euronymous welcomes Varg into the fold. Hiring troubled singer Pelle "Dead" Ohlin (Jack Kilmer), the band starts to build up a following, including the awkward Kristian "Varg" Vikernes (Emory Cohen). Oslo, 1987 the film follows Oystein "Euronymous" Aarseth (Rory Culkin), who has established a band named Mayhem to create a new subgenre of "true Norwegian black metal". The film tells the story of what happened when some black metallers took them very literally, leading to suicide, arson, and murder. Adapted from Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind's 1998 book, written for the screen by Dennis Magnusson and Jonas Åkerlund, and directed by Åkerlund (himself a founding member of black metal band Bathory), the film suggests that behind the scenes, most black metallers knew that their militant anti-establishment Satanism, claims of human sacrifices, championing of suicide, and advocation of anti-Christian violence were simply marketing tools, not to be taken literally. Adapted from Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind's 1998 book, written for the screen by Dennis Magnusson Equal parts funny and harrowing an enjoyable "true story" Looking at late 80s/early 90s Norwegian black metal, Lords of Chaos asks, "was its extreme image authentic or manufactured". Equal parts funny and harrowing an enjoyable "true story" Looking at late 80s/early 90s Norwegian black metal, Lords of Chaos asks, "was its extreme image authentic or manufactured".