This New Black Metal Documentary Totally Misses the Point

Blackhearts doesn't let 20 years of new music get in the way of a not particularly good story.

(courtesy of Blackheartsfilm.com)

Blackhearts opens with a bespectacled expert explaining to a group of schoolkids that black metal—the movement of souped-up teenage metal bands from the early '90s that replaced Motörhead's booze-and-bike talk with Satan, forests and ice—has become part of mainstream culture in Norway. But in other countries, he explains, "black metal is still something obscure and exciting."

This is true. In centers like Reykjavik, Montreal, Los Angeles and Portland, leaders in the subgenre have been weaving elements of electronic music, punk and indie rock into inhospitable Scandinavian soundscapes.

This is not something you'll learn from watching Blackhearts. Instead, directors Fredrik Horn Akselsen and Christian Falch focus on three middle-aged black-metal musicians making a pilgrimage to Norway for a metal festival. Hector is a candle-lighting, pentagram-drawing Satanist from Colombia. Sina lives in Tehran, where Western music comes under intense political scrutiny. Kaiadas is a member of parliament in Greece for the violent, fascist Golden Dawn party, which the filmmakers softly describe as "right wing."

Throughout Blackhearts, our heroes encounter aging founders of the Norwegian scene. A guitarist for the band Keep of Kalessin speaks about composing Christmas music and performing on the Eurovision Song Contest. Ted "Nocturno Culto" Skjellum of Darkthrone has a brief dialogue with Sina about playing black metal in Iran. Skjellum, who now expresses no interest in black metal, looks very uncomfortable.

In fact, the film is rife with moments of intense awkwardness. We see Hector and his bandmates perform a Satanic ritual, involving beer-bellied men dripping candle wax onto naked women. Uninterested children are forced to interact with the music. Much of the dialogue comes off as stilted and rote beyond what you'd expect with the language barrier.

As a film, Blackhearts is akin to watching foreign hip-hop fans travel to the United States to celebrate Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur, unaware of the 20 years of musical evolution that has since occurred. It fundamentally doesn't understand its own subject matter, playing up preordained conclusions about the music and culture that the senior musicians disavow. Blackhearts is ostensibly about celebrating fandom. Instead, it paints a sad, sloppy picture of three men whose priorities are badly out of whack.

Critic's Rating: C 

SEE IT: Blackhearts is unrated. It screens at NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium as part of the Reel Music Film Festival. 7 pm Saturday, Jan. 28. $9.

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