Until the Light Takes Us

Until the Light Takes Us - Dir. Aaron Aites & Audrey Ewell, 2009, Variance Films

This is perhaps the one example of a documentary surrounding black metal that has been filmed in English for a popular audience. It details the story of the beginning of the black metal underground movement in Norway and, like Lords of Chaos features interviews with key musicians within the subculture, focusing heavily on Varg Vikernes of Burzum and Fenriz of Darkthrone. A review for the film in The Village Voice stated that the film "arrives a decade too late to add much" and I had to agree; the only new information that I personally took away from the film was the personal views of the notable individuals within the black metal subculture; a great deal of the material consisted of what, in their views, was and was not, considered black metal. Much of the documentary consists on the music itself; the style, inspirations and album artwork that surrounds it, and to a certain extent I can use some of this to describe some of the cultural imagery that goes hand in hand with black metal, for example the use of stark black and white images on album covers, mimicked in the above poster art for the documentary. As such, there are no interviews with fans, and the interviewer does not speak, he merely leaves the viewer to fill in the blanks. However, this still remains the most comprehensive documentary that I have found on black metal, and being that it leaves many questions unanswered for me, that in itself remains a problem.