So I’m sure that people around here have heard about this new Black Metal documentary ‘Until the Light Takes Us’. It debuted at Film Festivals a year or two ago and has been playing for limited stretches at limited numbers of Cinemas ever since then. It was playing at Cinéma du Parc here in Montreal so I decided to check it out.

First of all, anyone who has at least a limited knowledge about the History of Black Metal won’t learn very much from this film. The only new historical (as it were) bits that I took away from it were a few juicy anecdotes, that were however so juicy that they were almost worth the ticket price – namely Varg’s very detailed (and grimly hilarious) account of Euronymous’s murder. The film presents its overriding theme well though; it shows the ways in which Black Metal was essentially misunderstood by the media and thus presented to the world in a different form; that Black Metal, in its essence, is therefore still unknown to all save for a relatively small group of people. True Black Metal, or more precisely it’s spirit, still survives as an esoteric phenomenon because it was never in essence revealed to the world. It’s an optimistic message to an underground mentality.

The film really excelled in how well it portrayed each personality visually (also worth the ticket price are a few heroic appearances made by Abbath and Demonaz from Immortal). Moreover, the soundtrack – fantastic. All of the appropriate metal fare plus some unexpected but welcome others, most notably ‘Boards of Canada’, a Scottish electronica outfit that supplies Fenriz’s nightly trudging with a bleakly melodic backdrop that is as cold and icy as the forest surrounding him. It’s a great movie to watch and to listen to. Go.

Until the Light Takes Us – Official Trailer

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