I guess what I’m trying to say is that it seems like they get sidetracked from their original premise by trying to force these incidents, which have little to do with each other beyond the fact that it’s all teenagers being jerks, under some kind of umbrella with black metal. They also talk some about the Electric Hellfire Club, which is fine but which isn’t metal. They were racists, but one does not imply the other and vice versa. The latter part of the book is all about this resurgent atavism, and it gets weird at times because they start discussing things like the Lords of Chaos, these boys in Florida who raised a lot of hell and have absolutely nothing to do with black metal at all.
It also leads to some strange divergences. It seems to me like this just gives more ammo to the Nazi kids that the author, in my opinion, spends way too much time on.
To me, this just sounds like a handy excuse for naughty teenagers, complicated by the fact that he refers to this “resurgent atavism” in conjunction with the Nazis- something about the theory that they were Wotan reincarnated. The author wants to push this idea of “resurgent atavism,” which claims that the ancient gods (in this case, the Norse gods) are more archetypes than gods, and that they are manifesting in modern society through these kids committing these violent acts. After the discussion on Varg and Neo-Nazism (which contains large segments of Varg being downright ridiculous), the book tries to focus beyond the initial crimes and scandals of the early 90s, looking at the way black metal has progressed in the world since. I did have some issues with the book, however.