Far Beyond all Light: The Life, Death and Legacy of Jon Nödtveidt and Dissection

by S. Monléon

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2025

Reviews

[Patrick.G.P · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly written, full of repetitions and an extremely narrow and subjective take on the subject matter. Peak stupidity ensues when the author manages to defend the murder of an innocent man as something both beyond societal ethics and irrelevant to the legacy of Nödtveit.
The entire book has the clammy atmosphere of a 17-year-old black metal fan who nods with crossed arms every time someone mentions the word 'satan'.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading for the interview content, but very poorly written and painfully subjective. The author constantly repeats himself. He constantly brings up new topics and writes that they will be covered elsewhere in the book. Multiple times in the book he mentions interviewing someone but deciding not to publish the content (including Varg). Half the book is about his admiration for Reinkaos. Readers will certainly get the story of Jon and all of his musical collaborations, but I didn’t really get anything new out of this.

[Martin Annander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read, but feels like it was written by a fan lauding the object of their admiration rather than as an attempt to tell the story. The story gets told anyway, for the most part, and if you're a fan of Dissection you will get something out of it. But this is interspersed with the author's personal hot takes and interpretations, which are of very mixed quality.

[Ross · Rating 1 out of 5]

A hagiography written by a seemingly obsessive fan who appears to worship the subject of the book, Jon Nödtveidt. The author constantly reminds the reader of his objectivity and how everyone else is wrong in their judgements of Nödtveidt. Nothing will ever make me not love Dissection, but this book just made me like Nödtveidt less. I couldn't stop rolling my eyes at the way the author worships and defends him, and justifies and writes off murder as a footnote. He’s also cringe inducing in his self seriousness and self importance, constantly sounding like a character from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. Almost nothing of value is offered from the fifteen years of research he did, because he refuses to criticize Nödtveidt in any way. The author desperately needed an editor, or better yet a journalist who would do something with the sources who isn’t an obsessed fan. I learned some things from the Dan Swano interviews, but beyond that the book almost entirely a waste of time and money. I *highly* recommend against buying or reading it.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

As others have said, the interview content is interesting and it works well as a story of dissection. As a biography of Jon Nödtveidt (and I say that as a fan in many ways) it is painfully lacking all due to the inaptitude of the "author". This problem is probably best summed up in his introductory remark were he states to write in a new genre - the "legacy biography". That he doesn't seem to know the term "hagiography" says it all. Unfortunate, but I still did enjoy the read.