Norwegian black metal – that dark, cold import from Europe, target of a 90’s media circus, its notorious surface tantalizingly scratched at in the 2005 documentary A Headbanger’s Journey, has finally been given some refreshingly nonjudgmental screen time all its own in Until the Light Takes Us, which just opened last weekend. We were lucky enough to attend a screening that featured a Q&A with the filmmakers at the end, so we’ve included a bit of what they said, too.
Instead of aiming for a mile-wide, inch deep overview of all the scene’s players, this film by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell focuses on two of the genre’s founders, Gylve Nagell of Darkthrone and Varg Vikernes of Burzum, and the start of black metal in general. Through their own words, we are presented with a personal story, from the picture-discs-hanging-on-the-walls-of-the-band’s-hangout inception to the prison-interview present day. The church burnings, the press frenzy, the murders, they’re all given unfiltered voice by those who were there.
This is a scene that’s understandably suspicious of journalism. In the segment on the church arsons, Varg recounts how telling a reporter about the fires not only led to his arrest, but kept him gagged while the newspapers went wild with speculation on the “satanic” destruction. According to the filmmakers, there were meetings among the musicians about the proposed film, and whether or not to cooperate. Some were interested in the project, but didn’t come forward to participate – one guy is now married with kids and none of them know anything about his past, and he prefers to keep it that way.
However, some did – the filmmakers were faced with cutting 350 hours of footage down to the 90 minutes of this documentary – and the initial contacts were made through the bands’ labels. Varg is interviewed while incarcerated, pontificating freely on black metal’s nihilistic ideology, what it was like to stab Euronymous through the skull, and smiling at the courtroom after receiving a 21-year sentence for murder and arson. Initially the movement, in his eyes, was against the encroachment of the monoculture, which deems the appearance of McDonald’s, NATO, and democracy as much of a threat as Christian domination over Norway’s pagan roots. “In our contemporary society, youth are pretty much lost. People are telling them what to do, but the youth have an instinct telling them, this is wrong.” The answer? An anarchist movement rising up in Norway – one not taking on the snarling, acerbic punk embraced in America and England, but mythic, grandiose, theatrical metal. The Second Wave of Black Metal, descended from Celtic Frost, Bathory, and Venom, a heavy sound that was also reacting against the commercialization of death metal. The credo, according to Varg: “Destroy everything to make way for the new.”
Gylve of Darkthrone, by contrast, is more musician than ideologue, working in the post office for the past 15-20 years so that he’s not completely dependent on Darkthrone to support himself. He’s very lively and opinionated throughout, whether blowing off an artist’s interpretation of the black metal image, getting searched for drugs on a train, or venting his frustrations in a phone interview about the assumptions made towards his band’s musical tastes: “What do you think, we sit in a trailer and listen to nothing but Anthrax all day?” (Which underscores the inclusion of Boards of Canada on the film’s soundtrack.) Where Varg is confined to the prison’s visiting room, Gylve wanders the city and rambles on about his music, likening his early verse to petting his fans like dogs, while his later work was meant to inspire suicidal urges. “A big part of me wishes that this whole thing didn’t turn into a trend – that’s what fucking sucked, and sucks still,” he says. “Then again, well…people like to dress up.”
The outside world, and its various frames of reference, is given a small spotlight as well. Harmony Korine’s dada dance moment illustrates radical recontextualization to the point of our fellow filmgoers’ disbelief, while artist Bjarne Melgaard immortalizes the musicians on a gallery wall, complete with a canvas shouting about who asked Jesus to die on the cross anyway, and Gylve’s unimpressed reaction. This sets up the contrast with Frost from Satyricon, who takes himself to ludicrious levels of seriousness, more than happy to stab a couch, slice his own neck, and breathe fire for the shocked masses. An artifice which doesn’t translate so well to the mundane atmospheres of airplanes and staring children. Dude, he’s Valor, we commiserated after the show.
As for the film itself, it’s best if you already have some familiarity with the main events. It’s not 101. There’s no narrator to connect the dots. There are no so-called experts, mainly because the filmmakers didn’t want “put everybody through the tabloid wringer” the way the media did when they first pounced on the arsons. Initially it’s hard to follow, without much background to go on, getting more cohesive further in when the church burnings come up. It is also not without humor. Immortal get a tiny bit of interview time that pops up here and there, offering their commentary like a black metal Statler and Waldorf.
On the plus side, the musicians are given lots of uninterrupted space to speak. No talking heads or patronizing book-hawkers butting in to keep all discussion firmly tethered to the surface. At least one other reviewer has criticized the filmmakers for being too lenient with their subjects and not challenging Varg’s more controversial statements. But, they (wisely, we think) decided not to make the same mistake the mainstream press does every time Satanic Panic hits the newswaves, and talk over (or silence) the people they’re talking about. That, and it took them two years to settle into Oslo and gain enough trust to come into this scene with cameras in tow. Something that would be incredibly stupid to blow with the same old denunciations and finger-wagging. They’ve decided to let the audience make up our own damn minds, which is quite a breath of fresh air for everybody involved.
Unfortunately, it’s uneven, meandering, spending a lot of time on events that have been rehashed over and over instead of diving into richer topics: what pissed them off so much about late-80’s death metal so much that they had to invent a whole new genre? What constitutes staying true vs. selling out? How do they feel about Cradle of Filth? How does Cradle of Filth feel about them? And hey, how about some performances? Besides Mayhem rehearsing in 1984? Which is a really weird oversight considering this is a film all about metal bands.
Perhaps this all might be answered in greater detail through the special features, which will purportedly run as long as the original movie, planned for the upcoming DVD – when the filmmakers get enough funding to make one.
