Out Now
Words by: Courtney Stark
Mayhem. The name alone is a summons. That logo — a sigil of shadow — is enough to divide, provoke, haunt, and even start a conversation in the line at any metal show. Without Mayhem, Norwegian black metal might never have taken its true form. They are no mere story; they are a fracture in sound, in thought, in ritual. Controversy is not decoration — it is the mortar of their existence. Name any band from a similar vintage and you’ll find breadcrumbs and croutons of scandal: some were DUIs and drugs, others were murder and burning churches, with a heavy swill of you can’t make this shit up. For context, watch Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Until the Light Takes Us, or, for something that reads less like a history lesson, Lords of Chaos.
The first wave came and went — Venom’s venom, Bathory’s frost, Celtic Frost’s occult extremity. It was the spark. Norway’s second wave arrived in the early ’90s: sharper, colder, absolute. From it emerged Mayhem and Burzum — not bands, but architects of shadow, of ceremony, of music that breathes like a tomb. Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth was more than a guitarist; he was the architect of the Norwegian black metal scene, a living symbol of its obsession with darkness and extremity. His record shop, Helvete, was no mere store — it was a crucible, a gathering place where ideas, aesthetics, and ideology coalesced into something far larger than music. It was here that the blueprint of the second wave was forged, in shadow and smoke, beneath walls steeped in the promise of transgression.
Now, four decades later, Mayhem is ever persistent. Liturgy of Death is not homage or a spectacle. It is liturgy. Death here is not an end but rather it is gravity, inevitability and a ritualization. Every riff is a ritual step. Every drumbeat is a heartbeat of the void. Every utterance from Attila Csihar a prayer whispered over a pyre. The music is austere, merciless, permanent. Mayhem do not survive history. They are its altar.
Each track is a chamber in a cathedral of ruin, each riff a chisel strike against the walls of mortality. The album does not whisper; it intones. It is a summons, a reckoning, a ledger of shadows made audible. In some ways, it honors the darkness Per ‘Dead’ Ohlin lived for — without turning it into a museum exhibit. He’d recognize that Mayhem are still on the edge, still facing mortality and ritual, even if the faces have changed.
Attila Csihar’s voice cuts through the cold like a ritual knife, part chant, part invocation, part declaration. Hellhammer’s drums do not merely keep time — they mark the pulse of something far larger, something patient, inevitable and are the backbone keeping the chaos from folding in on itself. Ghul and Teloch conjure riffs that feel both ancient and immediate. This is Mayhem at their most unflinching: austere, ceremonial, and entirely unconcerned with anything outside the walls of their own creation. Here, in this liturgy, death is not a story. It is doctrinal and as the album title declares, it’s liturgical.
This is not an album for comfort. It is an offering, an invocation, a mirror held to the inevitable. Liturgy of Death does not ask for understanding; it demands undivided attention, presence, and full submission. It is the sound of ritual made flesh, of shadow given voice.
Step into it carefully, for once the ceremony begins, there is no turning back — only the cold, unrelenting echo of Mayhem’s altar, and the recognition that death, in their hands, is both inevitable and absolute.
