The book then details the April 1991 suicide of Mayhem frontman Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin and the formation of a radicalized "inner circle" around Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, based out of his small black metal retail shop Helvete (Norwegian for "hell") in Oslo, Norway.

)[6] An interview in a Norwegian newspaper given by Burzum founder Varg "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes, also a member of the Helvete group, leads to a media outrage condemning the arsons as acts of Satanism.

The book also mentions other cases of "Satanic" murderers, such as that of Sandro Beyer by members of the German National Socialist black metal band Absurd and Caleb Fairley in the USA.

It also devotes several pages to the case of a self-styled teen militia named "Lords of Chaos" that perpetrated murder and arson in Fort Myers, Florida, in April 1996.

Filth claims the existence of a "Satanic Gestapo", when he recounts an incident where he was apparently attacked on stage with a knife (which he states may have been a prop) during a concert in Germany.

The authors put forward their own thesis about the reason behind the extreme music, the arsons and the cases of murder, interpreting these events as the appearance of an odinic archetype.

[4] German online magazine Telepolis questioned Moynihan's neutrality towards the ideologies portrayed in the book, as it leaves several far-right and racist statements by interviewees such as Vikernes uncommented on and uncriticized.

[3] While a reviewer for the left-oriented German newspaper Die Tageszeitung did not appreciate Moynihan earning royalties from the sales of Lords of Chaos, he still called it "the most thrilling non-fiction book since the Old Testament".

[18] Televangelist Bob Larson stated that he and Moynihan were "poles apart spiritually and philosophically", but that he respected the book as an "exhaustive resource regarding the seamy and Satanic side of pop music and culture".

Moreover, Feral House editor Adam Parfrey clearly wanted to publish a popular book on the strange universe of black metal rather than a political polemic.