Director Jonas Åkerlund’s premiered of his brutal feature Lords of Chaos at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Based on an astonishingly true story, Lords of Chaos recounts the exploits of the Norwegian black metal movement’s most notorious band: Mayhem and their violent undoing. Drawing from the 1998 book of the same name, Åkerlund injects his distinct visual style (as well as his own history as the co-founder of Swedish metal band Bathory) into the material. Vigorous performances from Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Sky Ferreira, and Jack Kilmer bolster this unhinged account of black-metal brotherhood gone wickedly wrong.

The film was met with rave reviews from Rolling Stone, Screen Anarchy and Variety, who called it a “pitch-perfect black metal dramedy” and “tremendous fun,” albeit a bloody ride. Check out the full Variety review here.