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| A scene from Kingdom Come. |
By Don Simpson
Three young Italian fans of black metal (Azzurra Antonacci, Leandro Guerrini and Alberto Daniele Troiana) are travelling to Bergen for Norway’s infamous Hole in the Sky (HITS) festival. They take a wrong turn in their Enslaved-pumping black van and soon find themselves on the driveway of a fundamentalist Christian household run by Kristin (Siren Jørgensen) and Svein (Trond Fausa Aurvaag).
Kingdom Come is the classic tale of evil black metal fans versus good Christians turned upside-down. Though the black metal fans wear inverted crosses around their necks, dress in all black, and are covered in tattoos and piercings, they are the victims of the diabolical Christians (who wear upright crosses around their necks and dress in all white). It is Kristin and Svein who superficially judge the black metal fans, assuming that they are representatives of Satan because of their appearance and taste in music.
Black metal has a lot of negative associations, from church burnings to white supremacy, but as far as we know these three Italians are merely just fans of the music. In director Kjersti Steinsbø’s short film, it is the Christians who are violent and close-minded and the black metal fans who are peaceful and innocent. In some ways Kingdom Come is an all too obvious slap in the fundamentalist Christians’ collective face, but in other ways it is a playful (at least for a non-Christian) take on the age-old saying that people are not always what they seem.
