The book focuses on the scene surrounding the
extreme heavy metal subgenre
black metal in
Norway between 1990 and 1993. The first few chapters give an outline of the progression of heavy metal from bands such as
Black Sabbath,
Coven and
Black Widow to proto-black metal bands such as
Bathory,
Mercyful Fate,
Celtic Frost,
Sarcófago,
Hellhammer and
Venom, and finally to the early Norwegian black metal band
Mayhem. The book then details the April 1991 suicide of Mayhem frontman
Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin and the formation of a radicalized "
inner circle" around
Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, based out of his small black metal retail shop
Helvete (Norwegian for "hell") in
Oslo, Norway. In 1992 and 1993, members of the group became connected with a series of crimes, starting with the arson of the
Fantoft stave church on June 6, 1992, although the book mentions that there had previously been a "small, ineffectual fire at Storeveit Church". Church arsons continued but with a steady decline up until 1995. (The cover of
Lords of Chaos shows a "19th-century Swedish church in flames".) An interview in a Norwegian newspaper given by
Burzum founder
Varg "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes, also a member of the Helvete group, leads to a media outrage condemning the arsons as acts of
Satanism. On August 21, 1992,
Bård "Faust" Eithun of the band
Emperor murdered a homosexual man in the
Olympic Park in
Lillehammer. He was subsequently convicted of this crime and sentenced to 14 years in prison (of which he served nine before being released in 2003). On August 10, 1993, Aarseth was murdered by Vikernes, who received a 21-year sentence for the murder and several cases of arson related to the church burnings. The book also mentions other cases of "Satanic" murderers, such as that of Sandro Beyer by members of the German
National Socialist black metal band
Absurd and
Caleb Fairley in the USA. It also devotes several pages to the case of
a self-styled teen militia named "Lords of Chaos" that perpetrated murder and arson in
Fort Myers, Florida, in April 1996. Interview passages with Varg Vikernes are spread out through several sections of the book. On Burzum.org Vikernes has said he would not use the term "
Nazi" any longer as self-descriptor; however, the statement is ambiguous. An interview with Vikernes about
Nasjonal Samling founder
Vidkun Quisling, executed in 1945 for
high treason by the Norwegian government after the end of the
occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany, is the main proof of Vikernes' admiration of him, and the proof of the rumor that Quisling had some influence on certain extreme strains of Norwegian black metal. The book presents other interviews with
Anton LaVey, founder of the
Church of Satan,
Tomas "Samoth" Haugen of Emperor, and
Dani Filth of
Cradle of Filth. Filth claims the existence of a "Satanic
Gestapo", when he recounts an incident where he was apparently attacked on stage with a knife (which he states may have been a prop) during a concert in Germany. The authors put forward their own thesis about the reason behind the extreme music, the arsons and the cases of murder, interpreting these events as the appearance of an
odinic
archetype. Within this scope, the
psychologist Carl Jung is quoted and also a study
Pathological firesetting from 1951. Satanism and the
heathenism from which it ultimately descends are themselves the products of the archetypes and differentiated psyches of nations and peoples, and they therefore spring from the same "occult" or mystical sources as nationalism itself. Nationalism is the political manifestation of a folk's unconscious; heathenism/Satanism is the spiritual manifestation. The book goes on to compare the state sought by the commission of these violent acts with the apocalyptic
Norse tale Ragnarök, but states that neither radicalized black metallers nor "their occasional allies, the right-wing revolutionaries" may have found "the fuse on the powderkeg of alienated resentment which lies behind the façade of 20th-century civilisation", yet that such a "powderkeg" exists nonetheless. ==Critical reaction==