Jonas Åkerlund’s new film, Lords of Chaos, is a rock’n’roll biopic, with all the wigs and gigs that that implies. But it is also a grisly, stranger-than-fiction comedy drama about murder, suicide, self-harm, devil worship, and a spate of arson attacks that scandalised a nation. Chronicling the outrageous crimes committed by a few Norwegian black metal bands and their hangers-on in the early 1990s, the film probably won’t appeal to lovers of Bohemian Rhapsody – and there have even been calls from some church groups for the film to be banned.

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The story behind it begins not in Norway but in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England, where a heavy-metal trio called Venom recorded its second album, Black Metal, in 1982. Before that, popular music had a long history of flirting with satanic imagery, from Robert Johnson’s Hellhound on my Trail to the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil to the provocatively named Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. But Venom took this unholy relationship further. “It’s hard to explain to younger people just how shocking Venom were back in the early ’80s,” says Chris Kee, a journalist for the magazines Zero Tolerance and Powerplay. “Satan appeared on the album covers and was namechecked in pretty much all the songs. This was blatant pledging allegiance to the dark lord. I remember looking at the burning crucifix in the gatefold sleeve of their 1984 album, At War With Satan, and wondering if this really was a step too far.”