Read our review of the film and see a trailer here

What was it about the black metal scene that inspired you to make a documentary?   

Audrey: The most honest answer is that we were inspired by this story of people who had the will to change the world, despite the seeming impossibility of that, and of having that effort then turned into just another cog in the wheel of the global capitalist machine.  But there were all sorts of reasons.  

Initially, we just assumed that someone had made a film about black metal, so we were just looking online, trying to find one that wasn’t just a sort of fan thing.   We couldn’t believe that no one had made this yet, that seemed crazy.  That’s what happens when you’re obsessed with something, it starts to seem odd that others aren’t.  It’s usually that sort of obsessive personality that allows films to get made, actually.  But anyway.  

That’s what put the idea in our heads to do it ourselves.  But the story also dovetailed with our interest in postmodernism, capitalism, and globalisation.  The story of Norwegian black metal is sort of a textbook example of simulation and simulacra, as well as ideas surrounding the loss of narrative.  Basically the story of black metal brings to life the idea that a copy of a copy of a copy of a thing, if copied and disseminated enough times, and regardless of how degraded or inaccurate the copies eventually become, can overtake the original and become the reality.  Thereby erasing history, and recreating it in this faulty image, which in this case is based on misinterpretation.  And the original is often lost forever.  In this instance, the original contained a real will to change the world, so we wanted to peel back some of the layers of the copies, show how this process occurs, and bring the popular (mis)perception of black metal back to where it began.  To where there is something vital and truthful.  

Because of the way they’ve been fucked over by the media as being insane Satanist church-burners, it must’ve been difficult to obtain your key ‘players’ trust… particularly that of Gylve from Darkthrone, who’s previously been reticent about talking about black metal. So… (a) how did you do it AND (b) how did you meet Gylve and get him to open up?

Aaron:   We were very worried about getting Gylve because it was integral to what we wanted to do, but fortunately we clicked with him right away.  The first night we met him he agreed to do the film.  We had a 50 page design doc for the film that basically described what it was going to be in great detail.  Even down to specific shots.  It’s not like we were just going up to black metal musicians and asking them to do a movie etc.  We had a very detailed, very specific plan and that included who would be in it.  So we needed him.  But I think that focus on those two gave us credibility with the whole scene, because if you were to do a film about the subject, those are the correct two people to be starring in it.  But Audrey and I just clicked with Gylve right away.  We have a lot of the same tastes and predispositions, and I think that was why more than anything.  

Audrey: We all share a love for Jesus Christ Superstar, among other things.  And bad jokes that you’ve just made up and are inordinately proud of.  Ok, that’s more me.  But Gylve laughs when I tell them to him, and that’s very nice.   Anyway, we were hanging out outside of filming, and that was more out of a desire to share each others’ company than to “get inside” or anything, so we got to know each other very well.   I believe he felt that he could trust us, and felt that we shared enough of a worldview that we weren’t going to do something that he would dislike, or that misrepresented him.  And we never rushed things.  Some days of filming, he’d be in a bad mood, or a non-communicative mood, and we’d film for a while and then wrap for the day, because it just wasn’t going anywhere.  And that was ok.  It was part of the process.  

The film wouldn’t be what it is without Varg Vikernes’s inclusion… so (a) how difficult was it getting him to agree to participate in the film? AND (b) how did you get him to agree?

Aaron:   It was difficult.  Again, in order to make the film we wanted to make, it needed to have Varg and Gylve anchoring it.  There was no “Plan B.”  It took about 8 months to get Varg to agree to do it.  We were writing with him, and he’d send us these letters that said “Even if you make the film that I myself would make, I still wouldn’t be in your movie.”  Those were tough letters to get because we were already over there filming, and we were going to just pack up and go home if he wouldn’t do the movie.   Eventually he agreed to meet, I flew up to the prison, and once we sat down and talked and I could really explain what we were doing with the movie, he agreed to do it.  And then once he agreed to do it, he really threw himself into it.  I think he looked at it as a chance to set the record straight and tell the story in his own words, and again, I think an underlying reason for everyone who participated was the fact that the right people were in the movie.  If you want to tell this story, these are the people you need.
  

Was there anything in particular that surprised you about Varg?

Aaron:   Honestly?  Not really.  I’d read every interview he’d ever done before I went in there and I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

It’s not mentioned in the movie, but did you find out just how notorious Varg is within the prison where he’s incarcerated?

Aaron:   We didn’t talk too much about that.  

What do you personally think it is about Norway that caused/provoked black metal into existence?

Audrey:   It was a combination of time and place. Norway is not part of the EU and has resisted overtures to join.  They have a strong economy and are oil-rich.  They’re both more isolated than many other countries, and there is a level of comfort and leisure that allows for intellectualized rebellion.  Punk had already happened, everyone pretty much knew better than to think that a movement based only on looking “weird” or acting out with drunken antics would escape commodification, or as Fenriz puts it, “becoming a trend.”  (Those anti-societal trappings were thrown in, but for good measure they added claims of Satanism, advocacy of drug abuse, and proclamations of admiration for fascist leaders).  At the same time, in the late eighties, globalization was really kicking into full swing, and blank corporate culture was changing the landscape.  Generic, American chains like McDonalds were popping up all over the place.

Aaron:   And taking the place of Norwegian institutions...

Audrey:   The only other cultural invasion of this scale had happened in 900 AD, when Christianity came to town.  It’s not an obvious connection to most people, but it was one made by Varg and a few others.  

And then finally, there's this idea of "national romance" in Norway, and a tradition of artists like Theodor Kittelsen who revere and romanticize their landscape and culture (and, um, trolls). That plays a part.  But it is also a cold, breathtakingly beautiful, Scandinavian country, and the scene sort of fits the personality of this place.

While all the musicians involved are very earnest about what they do, do you think there’s a tongue-in-cheek aspect to what they do – no matter how slight?

Aaron:   Obviously, when your starting campaigns like the “Never Stop The Madness” campaign to promote hard narcotics use, yeah.  It’s tongue-in cheek.  Or when your creating a logo for the communist government in Albania that says “40 years of freedom,” yeah.  It’s tongue in cheek.  Almost all of them have terrific and very subtle senses of humor and there are aspects to what they did that were certainly funny and tongue in cheek, but there are also aspects that were deadly serious.  

What was the most difficult aspect of making this movie?

Aaron:   When you do a film like this, it’s a total life commitment.  You have to be willing to completely dedicate yourself and sacrifice literally everything else.   

Audrey: The film can be polarizing.  When a film like this comes out, which intentionally doesn’t give direct answers to questions but instead invites the audience to draw connections that may be slightly challenging, some people assume that’s due to some sort of error on our part.  As if we accidentally juxtaposed seemingly disparate elements by mistake.   Like, “Oops, spilled a little bit of gallery scene there, let’s just leave that, it’ll be too hard to clean up.”   We spent many years working on the film, and everything’s right where it is for a reason.  It’s frustrating when people don’t get that, and it’s so satisfying when they do.  But that’s the nature of the beast, because if you’re telling people what to think, then that doesn’t really leave space for conversation or thought, and that’s absolutely what we want the film to provoke.  So, the whole thing about (mis)interpretation, essentially the core idea of the film, is something that I struggle with.  And finding the balance as a maker, where you’re engaging people with ideas and stories and trying to reflect the world in a different, personal way, without being simplistic or too obvious, or too oblique for that matter, can be tough.  That not unusual though, it’s a common thing for artists and filmmakers to deal with.  But there’s a kind of activism behind our work that I think will become more obvious with our successive films.  If we get to make them.