I return to yell into the void about 10 standout albums in hopes that the void yells back. As always, the numbering may shuffle, but the albums remain.

10.  AFI – Bodies

9. Hail the Sun – New Age Filth

8. Unto Others – Strength

7. Ningen Isu (人間椅子)- Kuraku (苦楽)

6. Amigo The Devil – Born Against

5. King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – Butterfly 3000

4.  Sleep Token – This Place Will Become Your Tomb

3.  Spirit Box – Eternal Blue

2. Ice Nine Kills – Welcome To Horrorwood: Silver Scream 2

1. Eidola – The Architect

The placement of these songs is not really that important. These are just 15 albums that really stuck out in a year of great music. I was able to listen to more music in 2019 than in the past couple years, so there was a lot to cut down. There are also a lot of genres and moods that could effect the list, etc.

15. Bent Knee – You Know What They Mean
14. Hexvessel – All Tree
13. Opeth – In Cauda Venenum
12. Traveler – Traveler  
11. Green Lung – Woodland Rites
10. Boy Harsher – Careful 
9. Drab Majesty – Modern Mirror
8. Birdeatsbaby – The World Conspires
7. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Infest the Rats Nest
6. Tanith – In Another Time
5. Crypt Sermon – The Ruins of Fading Light
4. Spirit Adrift – Divided by Darkness 
3. Soen – Lotus 
2. Atlantean Kodex – The Course of Empire
1. Idle Hands – Mana

We arrived at the White Rabbit with leather on our backs and Kuma’s Corner in our bellies ready to celebrate our late Valentine’s date in the most brutal way we could safely manage; live music and the screening of a black metal biopic.

• 

The band of the evening was Shroud of Vulture, a group that blends equal parts black, death, and doom metals to create a radioactive alloy strong enough to blow your high school chemistry teacher’s eardrums out. Their lineup speaks to the beautifully incestuous nature of Indiana’s metal scene, with the membership of:
Mike Naish (Apostle of Solitude, Astral Mass, Sleepbringer, Archarus),
Nate Bracey (Casque, Kata Sarka, Summon the Destroyer)
Billy Boswell (Phunkbot),
and Justin Rea (Black Goat of the Woods, Tunguska, Self Abuse)

While the band’s demo Valium 1 is available on bandcamp and Spotify, it was unsurprisingly much better in a live setting, complete with broken strings and witty banter about starting fires and Rory Culkin killing or being killed (no spoilers!). Check them out. Hell, check out anything that any of these guys are doing.

Lords of Chaos was directed by Jonas Akerlund, the original drummer for Bathory and the director of music videos for Candlemass, Rammstein, Metallica, and several high profile pop acts. In my opinion he’s a great choice for directing movies about music and the image that musicians try to cultivate. In black metal that later point is undeniably important.

The movie starts with a disclaimer that it’s based on truth, lies and what actually happened. This is how every biopic should start, but it is especially appropriate in this instance since the only survivors that can explain “what happened” are unreliable at best and potentially delusional racist narcissists at worst. I appreciated his mirroring real Mayhem photographs, recreating the shots and attempting to fill in the gaps between the photos.

He also tried to bring more emotion and realism to the characters and their stories, something that gets lost in the internet epics of great evil creators fighting for true Norwegian Black Metal. He reminds us that they are really just boys playing around and the group-think about extreme ideas spirals out of the children’s hands. You may not agree with all of his assertions but I’m pretty sure it’s the closest we will ever, and maybe COULD ever get to a definitive dramatization of the Mayhem story. I won’t completely spoil the plot for anyone who has missed the true crimes of the band, but I will say this: the final conversation between Varg and Aarseth is so much more human and thus so more brutal than the stories I’ve read and it messed me up a little. So thank you, Akerlund, for not shooting this like a horror movie that I can easily shrug off.

My final thoughts on the film are that it is well done, even through the ridiculous and sometimes laughably absurd, because that’s how those kids were. Love it or hate it. Take it or leave it.