of alienated resentment which lies behind the façade of 20th-century civilisation", yet that such a "powderkeg" exists nonetheless. Critical reaction Reviews of Lords of Chaos have been mixed, with several critics praising the book for offering an informative or at least interesting view on a relatively obscure subculture, and the book won the 1998 Firecracker Alternative Press Award. The publication was sometimes criticized for a perceived lack of distance towards its subject matter. This was considered especially alarming to groups and figures that had accused Moynihan of right-wing sympathies, charges he has denied. 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. The author's questions during these interviews are noted to resemble "cue-giving" at times. 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". 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". Journalist Kevin Coogan wrote an essay titled "How Black Is Black Metal?" in which he discusses several of the ideas purported in Lords of Chaos. Coogan considers Moynihan's personal political beliefs to be "at work just below the surface of a text ostensibly devoted solely to analyzing an extremist musical sub-culture" and ultimately counters the book's apocalyptic thesis with the conclusion that the black metal/fascism connection hangs largely "on a thin evidentiary thread", namely Varg Vikernes, who had shown extremist tendencies well before entering the scene. Coogan states that Moynihan is "an extreme rightist whose fusion of politics and aesthetic violence shapes a not-so-hidden sub current that runs throughout LOC". Coogan writes that the book itself: ...is not a "fascist" tract in the strict sense of the term, in part because Moynihan co-wrote the book with Didrik Søderlind, a former music critic for a mainstream Norwegian paper who is now (as of 2005) an editor at Playboy. 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. Moynihan, in turn, has denied Coogan's allegations. Varg Vikernes, a