News

A new movie tells the appalling true story of Norway’s ‘black metal murders’. Nicholas Barber explores the dark tale behind the film.

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.

LINK: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190213-lords-of-chaos-the-grisly-film-that-has-caused-outrage

Penny Lane’s documentary about The Satanic Temple’s grassroots activism is hilarious but thought-provoking

In 2013, an organization billing itself as The Satanic Temple made a minor news splashwhen it mounted a press conference at the Florida State Capitol to praise Governor Rick Scott for signing a bill to permit student-led “inspirational messages” at school events. The group issued a statement in support of freedom of religion, saying that the bill “has reaffirmed our American freedom to practice our faith openly, allowing our Satanic children the freedom to pray in school.” It was a puckish take on a thinly disguised, widely unpopular attempt to return religion to public schools, but while the event itself only featured a handful of self-declared Satanists in black clothes and Halloween-costume robes, it drew a fair amount of press attention for its sheer outrageousness.

LINK: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/26/18198728/hail-satan-film-review-satanic-temple-lucien-greaves-jex-blackmore-sundance-2019

 

From the “God Hates Fags” vitriol of the Westboro Baptist Church to the white supremacist and homophobic totalitarianism of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to the violent neo-Nazi advocates of “racial holy war” in the Creativity Movement, examples of hate metastasizing via religious dogma abound.

The Twelve Tribes, a Christian fundamentalist cult born in the American South in the 1970s, is little-known to much of the country, and on first impression its communes and hippie-vibed restaurants and cafes can seem quaint and bucolic. But beneath the surface lies a tangle of doctrine that teaches its followers that slavery was “a marvelous opportunity” for black people, who are deemed by the Bible to be servants of whites, and that homosexuals deserve no less than death.

LINK: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2018/darkness

Chicago’s notoriety as the home of America’s first serial killer was highlighted in the 2003 book “The Devil In the White City,” the story of H.H. Holmes and his now-famous “Murder Castle.”

LINK: https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/02/12/devil-in-the-white-city-hulu-show/

Lyndon LaRouche, the quixotic, apocalyptic leader of a cultlike political organization who ran for president eight times, once from a prison cell, died on Tuesday. He was 96.

LINK: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/obituaries/lyndon-larouche-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

LINK: http://www.zodiackillersite.com