As a curious fanatic of all genres of music, I couldn’t resist finally reading what is considered to be a literary staple of music history. It’s more or less what I expected — behind the terrifying imagery and violent crimes, it’s just a group of men trying to outdo one another in edginess. I appreciated reading about this scene in the 90s though! Since it’s been two decades since the book was published, the perspectives and theories that psychologists and other musicians provided the authors are either still spot-on or hilariously aged poorly. Still, it’s an intriguing piece of archived history. Certain aspects regarding psychology and nationalism repeated themselves over and over which kind of made the book a chore to finish toward the end, but I understand it was all part of the process to understand the black metal scene branches as best one possibly could at the time.