In the last two decades, a bizarre and violent musical subculture called "Black Metal" has emerged in Norway. Its roots stem from a heady blend of horror movies, heavy metal music, Satanism, Paganism, and adolescent angst. In the early-mid 1990s, members of this extremist underground committed murder, burned down medieval wooden churches, and desecrated graveyards. What started as juvenile frenzy came to symbolize the start of a war against Christianity, a return to the worship of the ancient Norse gods, and the complete rejection of mainstream society.

The first book of essays by a long-time renowned chronicler of underground culture. Johan Kugelberg's book on the early history of hip hop won the NYPL books for the teen age award 2008 and his book on the Velvet Underground won the Foreword silver medal for music 2010. The way this book mashes up lo-bro and hi-bro is readable, funny and thought-provoking, and also downright provoking. Johan Kugelberg's essays on punk, style and pop culture have entertained readers of international publications including Dazed and Confused, Another Man, Ugly Things, Perfect Sound Forever, Spin, Raygun and Fact over the last couple of decades.

The Sex Pistols have defined the look, sound, and feel of the punk movement since they formed in London in 1975. Together for less than three years a short run that included just four singles and one studio album before they broke up in 1978 their impact on the musical and cultural landscape of the last forty years is nothing short of remarkable. The Sex Pistols Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock (later to be replaced by Sid Vicious) were brought together by the cultural impresario Malcolm McLaren. Between the cultivated attitude of the players themselves, the aggressive management of McLaren, and the tremendous success of their era-defining album Never Mind the Bollocks Here s the Sex Pistols, the band embodied the punk spirit and coloured the worlds of music, fashion, youth culture, and design forever. Published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the band s formation, Johan Kugelberg and Jon Savage draw on an unprecedented wealth of mate- rial from McLaren s handwritten letters to never- before-seen photographs of the band, Jamie Reid s iconic album artwork, and a range of ephemera from concert tickets to fanzines to produce the most comprehensive visual history of the band ever produced and a bible of popular culture for years to come.