Mayhem’s Necrobutcher is REALLY Stoked on the Lords of Chaos Movie

Generally speaking, biopics about musicians tend to fall into one of two categories:

1. The artist or estate of the artist had nothing to do with the movie, and claim that the entire thing is inaccurate bullcrap.
2. The artist or estate of the artist had something to do with the movie, and the flick ends up being an uninteresting hagiography.

So we either get Sid & Nancy or Notorious. There doesn’t really seem to be an in-between.

So into which category will the upcoming film adaptation of black metal history book Lords of Chaos fall? Apparently, the former. Mayhem bassist Necrobutcher (né Jørn Stubberud) tells Rolling Stone:

“This book Lords of Chaos is fucking crap and that some stupid Swedes are gonna make a movie out of it is not OK. I will do everything I can to stop this film… Tell the Swedes and the Hollywood people to go fuck themselves.”

Lords of Chaos may very well be “fucking crap” — I’ve never read it — but Necrobutcher’s stance is somewhat weakened by his insistence on blaming the entire nation of Sweden for the film and not just filmmaker (and former Bathory drummer!) Jonas Åkerlund, who will direct the movie from a screenplay he co-wrote.

Also weakening Mr. Butcher’s stance:

“The bassist also told Rolling Stone that a Norwegian company called Motion Blur has the rights to his story and that he has been spending time collaborating on a script for the film.”

So now Necrobutcher’s claim that the book is all lies seems just as likely to be self-serving promotion as it is genuine righteous indignation: of course Necrobutcher has to claim that this movie won’t tell the “real” story, and that we’ll have to wait for his movie to come out if we want the “truth.” If he didn’t make that claim, there’d be no reason for anyone to go see his movie, which means there’d be no reason for anyone to fund or produce his movie.

But even if Necrobutcher’s assessment of Lords of Chaos is 100% accurate, it’s not really gonna help him much. The bottom line is, unless you’re watching a documentary, the “truth” barely matters. Every dramatist from Shakespeare to Oliver Stone to Mel Gibson to Clint Eastwood to Ava DuVernay has taken liberties with the facts when creating their historical dramas, because they understood that, ultimately, what matters is telling an engaging story, not make a rote recreation of actual events. Necrobutcher’s only concern right now should be writing a compelling screenplay, not whether or not Lords of Chaos is gonna be accurate or steal his thunder or whatever.