Until the Light Takes Us

This special limited edition slipcover is limited to 1,000 units and is only available on our website and at select indie retailers. Absolutely no major retailers will be stocking them.

Factory 25, a Brooklyn-based independent film distribution company was founded in 2009 by Matt Grady. F25 is a home for conceptually provocative narratives and documentaries. Its mission is to deliver specialized film and music titles in an aesthetically captivating way while exposing the indie world to under-the-radar films, music, and other curiosities in various ways and formats — theatrically, digitally, on TV, VOD, via subscription, limited edition DVDs,  Blu-ray's, books and vinyl. Vinegar Syndrome’s sister company, OCN Distribution, is thrilled to be representing this diverse and unique home video line!

Until The Light Takes Us tells the story of black metal. Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists and music fans world-wide. Until The Light Takes Us goes behind the highly sensationalized media reports of "Satanists running amok in Europe" to examine the complex and largely misunderstood principles and beliefs that led to this rebellion against both Christianity and modern culture.

To capture this on film, directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell moved to Norway and lived with the musicians for several years, building relationships that allowed them to create a surprisingly intimate portrait of this violent, but ultimately misunderstood, movement. The result is a poignant, moving story that’s as much about the idea that reality is composed of whatever the most people believe, regardless of what’s actually true, as it is about a music scene that blazed a path of murder and arson across the northern sky.

directed by: Aaron Aites & Audrey Ewell
starring: Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell, Varg "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes, Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg, Kjetil "Frost” Haraldstad, Olve “Abbath” Eikemo, Harald "Demonaz" Nævdal, Bjarne Melgaard, Harmony Korine
2008 / 93 min / 1.78:1 / English Dolby Digital 2.0

Additional info:

• Region Free Blu-ray
• Black Metal short film of deleted scenes
• Alternate ending
• Outtakes
• The Cutting Room with musicians not in the film including:
  • Enslaved
  • Ted "Nocturno Cutlo" Skjellum from Darkthrone
  • Jørn "Necrobutcher" from Mayhem
  • Plus more with: Ulver
  • Immortal
  • Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg
  • Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell
  • Kjetil "Frost" Haraldstad
• 46 more minutes of Varg Vikernes
• History of black metal class with Fenriz
• Memory Box. A short film produced as proof of concept for a feature-length film:
  • Following co-director Aaron Aites' diagnosis with (and subsequent death from) cancer, writer/co-director Audrey Ewell decided to release it as a short film in his memory. The film stars Louis Cancelmi and Mackenzie Davis
• English, Spanish, French subtitles