MAYHEM

Mayhem are a legend and a cult name, everything knows that they started as a death metal to become the most famous fathers of the ’90 black metal. Probably if I have to review the band discography compared to the great and superior amount of work of bands like Immortal and Darkthrone those have a certain importance. Surely Mayhem became first, but the 1987 demo “Deathcrush” was a sort of death metal with some original intuitions but not what I intend for black metal. Mayhem had so many line-up changes but after all the words and the extra-musical acts the discography of the band isn’t so rich. The best example of what was happening inside the band, in a very long period of official releases silence, was the Live in Leipzig, a bootleg where Euronymous and co. were performing some new songs together with some older songs from the demos.
The new ones are different with a colder and more sombre mood, with an occult aura. Ideologically the thing were becoming more and more serious and dangerous, the music was the mirror of those changes but the long awaited debut was post-posted ‘cause of the Euronymous homicide.
Euronymous was a very influent guy in the first half of the ’90, he was the typical scene leader, one that was trying to give the Norwegian scene a trademark, with his ideas on the riffs and on the right mood on the music and with his satanic ideology, but after all strong personalities in Immortal and Burzum were so important to take care of theirself for the present and the future.
Darkthrone were strongly in contact with Euro in the “A Blaze…” era but since his death they started to collaborate more with Burzum, and some black metal bands were maturing, like Emperor they were taking their own way with a more symphonic and less ’80 atmosphere. Euro showed the way for the purest form of black metal, songs like “Funeral Fog”, “Pagan Fears” and “Freezing Moon” are the flags of that type of music, but apart from that gem that is the long awaited debut they have not recorded an important discography like the two names that I have nominated (Immortal and Darkthrone).
“De Misteriis Dom Sathanas” (Vote 10) was finally released one year after Euronymous’ death and it showed what excellent music the band was composing, a satanic, occult form of dark evil desecration, a hellish worship of death and every blasphemous occult power.
Attila’s voice is a sick whisper, and a cruel manifestation of the inner darkness, not the typical screaming, a very original and visionary interpretation of the music. “De Misteriis…” is a damned album, the lyrics were written by a singer that died for suicide and the main riffs by the well-known Euronymous, killed by the hand of the Burzum’s mastermind Varg Vikernes. This music is the expression of that incredible age of the extreme metal scene, years where extremism was a style of life not a role-playing like some idiots turned to genre to be years after.