Jonas Åkerlund’s Lords of Chaos film has been controversial for its stylized depiction of the events surrounding the turbulent Norwegian black metal scene of the early ’90s, including the notorious church burnings and the murder of Mayhem guitarist Euronymous. Now, Mayhem themselves have opened up about the film in a video interview with Heavy Consequence.
In the interview, which you can watch above, founding member and bassist Necrobutcher commended the film’s costume design and set pieces for their era-specific authenticity, but his praise ends there. After revealing that he met with Åkerlund, Necrobutcher said that the film “came out all wrong.”
“They should have called us first and maybe we could’ve done something,” he said. “I saw it, and it just made me sad. It’s not a good movie.”
Mayhem also revealed that the film did little to increase their fanbase. As guitarist Ghul explained in the interview, an awkward Metallica music video tie-in that uses the characters from Lords of Chaos also netted minimal interest in Mayhem. “The world’s biggest metal band makes a music video pretending to be us,” Necrobutcher said. “That was weird.”
Toward the end of the above clip, Necrobutcher gave some backstory regarding the rights to the film, explaining that Norwegian filmmakers tried to make a movie about the story as early as 15 years ago. A few years later, Hollywood became interested. Although Necrobutcher received a contract, negotiations were never finalized, and the band was left out of the process for Lords of Chaos, though it has proliferated the band’s logo and namesake across the world.
(Buy: Tickets to Mayhem’s Upcoming Shows)
Necrobutcher saved his final criticism for the film’s source material, Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind’s true-crime biography of the same name, which Necrobutcher called the “worst book on the subject of them all.”
Watch the full clip with Mayhem above and check out the previous portion of our interview in which Necrobutcher revealed that he had planned to murder Euronymous himself. Mayhem’s sixth full-length album, Daemon, comes out on Friday (October 25th) and is available for pre-order via Century Media. The band kicks off a European tour on October 31st. Tickets are available at their website and here.
