u/phantom_2131

Love this era of Mayhem 🔥 Since there's been interesting posts on it recently, here's some pics.

Bård "Faust", Attila & Blasphemer.

I wonder what the occasion was...

On Euronymous, had he lived:

"I think that he would be working very hard with correspondence,” comments Necrobutcher when asked what he thinks Euronymous would be doing if still alive today, “and distributing music. He would probably continue the work that we had already started with Deathlike Silence. He had signed all the good bands that Voices of Wonder stole before they went to separate places, so I think if he didn’t die he would have all these great bands on this label. Before he died he saw all these bands popping up in Norway that came after us, so he saw the explosive development from day one, the feeling we had rehearsing in ’84,’85 that just grew and grew. It’s too bad he passed away and is not here to enjoy it.”

“The worst thing with that was getting a letter from him in my mailbox the next day,” sighs Deathcrush vocalist and longtime contact Maniac. “He sounded very determined about his future; unfortunately for him the future was terminated.”

On De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and Satanism:

"...The album is generally considered one of the archetypal Satanic metal albums, though Necrobutcher—who was present for the writing of the lion’s share of the material—is adamant that this isn’t as clear-cut as it might seem. “We were not practicing any religion, we made music,” he explains simply. “The fact that the album is called De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas makes people think we are [a] Satanic band, but it’s based on a book called that, which is about Satanism but is not about worshipping it. It was a book that inspired Dead to write the lyrics, but he is not around to answer that question and I never saw the book myself. If other people feel this is Satanic music, maybe it is. This is the great thing about art, you make it but other people can find other things in your art that you don’t see yourself or that you don’t think about yourself when you make it or perform it.”

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.

"...The polar opposite of Grand Declaration of War, Ordo Ad Chao was nonetheless just as daring a statement. Murky and bass-heavy, it is a swampy and inaccessible listen, revealing its mysteries and rewards only with considerable patience from the listener. Once again using unusual time signatures and song structures, the riffs and melodies are obscure even by Mayhem standards, and the production—courtesy of Attila and Blasphemer, the album being engineered and mixed by Arcturus’ Knut Valle—saw the processed approach of earlier releases replaced by a sound as undeniably organic as a hunk of rotten meat. Even Hellhammer’s percussion had undergone a radical transformation from its usually ultra-precise approach, having been recorded in just a few evenings, with only kicks being triggered and no equalizing whatsoever.

“I set it as my goal to make the most negative piece of shit ever,” states Blasphemer. “We came up with this crazy concept that was perfect you know, it was all about questioning everything, basically what I wanted to do with the music was very on the border where people stop calling it music, everything was chaotic, hypnotic, acid-like. I think we managed something pretty unique on that album. It was more about exploring guitars and getting the ugliest possible riff out. Of course it had to be good, but it was more like a science of the music, trying to get it to absorb itself in terms of negativity.”

While much of the band’s fan base were excited to have Attila back in the fold, it was already clear that pleasing the tastes of Mayhem traditionalists was still a long way down the band’s list of priorities. Ordo Ad Chao, though undeniably black metal, was nonetheless just as avant-garde and experimental as Grand Declaration, a point the band’s live shows soon began to reflect. Central to this was Attila, who quickly turned the aesthetic of the genre on its head with a wide array of costumes that saw the frontman plastered in trash, singing from a sack, adorned as a tree, dressed as Bugs Bunny, appearing in a mock kitchen as a chef, and even wearing a dead pig’s head, among other outfits.

Initially conceived by Attila and Blasphemer, the new stage show was very much in line with Attila’s approach to art and life as a whole. In fact, where Maniac’s lyrics had revealed a scientifically inclined, non-spiritual outlook, Attila’s lyrics for Ordo Ad Chao drew upon a unique worldview and an interest in conspiracies and alternative views of the universe.

“I don’t consider myself an artist in the traditional meaning, it’s more like a channel,” Attila explains, “these ideas are coming from somewhere and even I cannot say where. Of course there is me in there, but it’s more about keeping the channel open and clean so that I can receive it. I always felt this channeling since the Tormentor times. I think our mind is working on so many levels that we’re not aware of, not just the subconscious but the supreme consciousness. Where is an idea coming from? We don’t know—people would say it’s an electrochemical something in our brain, but I don’t think it’s just that, I think something is coming from outside, that there is knowledge out there. Like birds that have a map in their head or fishes, they don’t get lost, and in a similar way I think we can connect to this knowledge. I think we have an ability to hook on this information and that’s one of my goals in life; to understand that, and more and more I am looking to the ancients. People talk about the evolution of civilizations but if you look to the ancients they were able to make structures that we can’t make today, such as Baalbek in Lebanon.”

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.

"...The 2007 album Ordo Ad Chao, a twist on the Freemason motto “Ordo Ab Chao” or “Order from Chaos.” Like 2000’s Grand Declaration of War it was conceived via intense collaboration between vocalist and guitarist, and based around a carefully conceived concept, with Attila handling all lyrics and Blasphemer writing all the music in the studio, even going so far as to record the basslines on all but one song.

“The composition was mainly between Blasphemer and myself but of course we shared ideas all the time, sending files back and forth,” explains Attila. “In 2005 we laid down what the ideology should be for the next record, it was kind of a long process. That album went a little bit over the top, a lot of riffs and changes, there’s a lot of details there that people don’t see. Actually I don’t think I ever worked as much on any lyrics, I tried to make it cryptic but every lyric had a meaning, I could talk for hours on the connections between songs and so on. The intro and the last song connected, it’s like a frame, then the first three songs are more like an outer perspective and the next two an inner perspective. And it’s on three levels; nature, society and religion. We took the slogan ‘Ordo ab chao’ and tried to turn it ’round, ‘order into chaos’ not ‘order from the chaos.’ There’s a lot going on in the lyrics and the music; people would think it was very chaotic, but it’s very organized. We like to challenge and the Ordo album was challenging for the fans.”

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.

Attila on working with Blasphemer on Ordo Ad Chao album:

“This whole album was basically done by Blasphemer and me. He wrote the music, I wrote the lyrics, but we worked in parallel together—he lives in Portugal and I live here, but we kept in contact through the net,” Csihar explains. “It was always a question how can we work together. I think for both sides it was a very nice surprise. He is as crazy a guy as me. I mean, he’s really fucking crazy—you can see it in his eyes. We tried to keep [the album] ugly, dark, imaginative, and with a certain intelligence, as much as we could. I thought De Mysteriis was something ahead of its time. And actually, now I feel similarly about Ordo Ad Chao.”

Source: https://www.revolvermag.com/music/attila-csihar-dark-past/

“...First of all I’d like to say I appreciate what Maniac did for the band during the ten years he was on the job and I take my hat off for that,” begins Necrobutcher, “but I can only speculate what would have happened if I called Attila in ’93. It’s a funny story; Euronymous, when he took Attila to Oslo to record, it was important to him that we didn’t meet ’cos that would blow his plan to do this thing without me. Attila was looking for something to smoke desperately and at that time basically you could call me about [obtaining] stuff like that. When we met in ’98 we were brothers, you know, big-time—we hit it off ’cos we have a lot of similar ideas on big issues in life you might say—and I realized what happened, this scheme to control the product. I didn’t have his telephone number, ’cos Øystein was in contact with the guy.”

“I got in touch with the band again when I met them in Italy,” explains Attila, speaking of their 1998 visit to Milan captured on Mediolanum Capta Est. “I spoke to Hellhammer even before that, there had been a blackout for a year or two, but after that we were in touch and there were some agreements that if they ever needed a vocalist they were going to ask me first. In 2004 Blasphemer called me finally. I had heard the last records and there was a musical progression and I must say Blasphemer is a really great composer and guitarist so it was cool to work together.”

“I always got on well with the vocalists,” says the Blasphemer, “both Maniac and Attila, though I didn’t really know Attila then. He had a lot of ideas. By the end Maniac was not into it at all, so when you got a hungry vocalist back in, he gave a lot—you could really feel the difference in rehearsal and his voice had a lot of personality.”

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.

"...In the midst of this came 2004’s Chimera, whose title, Blasphemer explained to Crypt, was chosen to convey that “the world, its content and all common understanding is nothing but an illusion.”

Musically it was once again a change of track, maintaining the complexities and stop/start structuring of its predecessor but proving a far more aggressive, traditional black metal record. Maniac’s vocals also proved unusually guttural, a far cry from the spirited eloquence of the previous album.

“I kind of felt to take it further in that vein would be strange, perhaps awkward, and wanted to go more straightforward,” explains Blasphemer, “so that was my attempt to write something straight ahead. I was also totally screwed up at that point, and I think that’s why the album came out like that, I think every album sort of reflects the certain mental state you are in.”

“Too much alcohol, too much drugs, fucked up at the rehearsals, the whole Mayhem machinery was going, it was crazy times,” relates Necrobutcher of the period. “Today I would say some good songs came out of that album, like ‘My Death.’ But we should have worked completely differently. I wish that we could have lived in the rehearsal place for, like, half a year more before going into the studio, personally.”

“It was a pretty harsh period, but a necessary thing,” reflects Blasphemer. “It was mostly me, but I wrote all the music anyway. I didn’t use them [drugs] as an inspiration really, just to get fucked up—if I had cash, it was constant. Grand Declaration was very well-received and I was feeling things were going very smooth and so it was very easy to go all the way. It prevents you from thinking, you just go for it. I remember I overdosed two times in the same day with amphetamines, so it was just a very unhealthy thing, always alcohol every occasion, every interview, all the time, even recording. I felt it was more important to be out partying and doing fucked up things, I could not focus. I was not happy with anything and I wanted to be numb. The band at this time also began to get a bit fractured and it was not the best relationship, at times it began to feel like a burden…. I wanted for us to be a really good live band but you know it was Maniac who was out at that time and that was his last tour. It was on the cards really, he didn’t enjoy being on stage and it was obvious to everyone.”

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.

"...While many critics applauded the record for its forward-thinking nature, for other fans it was a vindication of earlier suspicions regarding the band’s return, with some feeling that the band had moved too far from their core sound. Indeed, when asked in Crypt whether he felt he was being restricted creatively by the conservatism of certain Mayhem fans, Blasphemer replied, “Yes! Not many people ask me that but it’s the fucking ugly truth. People still continue to surprise me in their pitifulness and absolute ignorance. I have felt the ties of the masses for sure but I can’t allow myself to be tied.”

“People fucking hated it, they said we had turned into a shit band,” recalls Necrobutcher with a laugh.

“It was an honor to work with Maniac,” says Blasphemer. “He is a tremendous artist with some very clever ideas and it was mainly his ideas, but also something we shaped together to a certain extent. If you pay attention to the album, it’s very thorough and thought-through, the music follows the lyrics and the lyrics follow the music very well on that album.”

“That record was really hard to record as Blasphemer pushed me very hard in all kinds of directions,” recalls Maniac. “He knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. It’s part of his genius I suppose. The album is like surgery both musically and lyrically. I would say that there is not an ounce of spirituality; the lyrics deal with the end of this world and the beginning of another, but only through scientific destruction and harsh scientific reality. It is very inspired by Nietzsche, although in retrospect I think that Nietzsche was rather spiritual, so I think what I took from him was suited to my approach on how I perceived the world. I am proud of this album but I could never repeat it and my worldview is very, very different now. I have become a Satanist, but one far removed from the Church of Satan or the popular view of Satanism. I am on my way home to the brilliant darkness.”

The authoritarian nature of the record’s lyrics, which frequently rallied against peace, weakness, and stagnation, was mirrored by a wider exploration of totalitarian imagery and themes during this period. Hellhammer had already raised eyebrows due to a number of choice comments on the subject of race and an apparent fondness for swastikas, but the band as a whole had also been provoking the public’s sensibilities since Wolf’s Lair Abyss (the Wolf’s Lair famously being Hitler’s military headquarters), making use of the SS Totenkopf (skull and crossbones) and other historic Nazi imagery on merchandise.

“From the start when we called ourselves Mayhem it was about exploring the dark side of everything, negativity, developing into war, torture, crimes against humanity,” explains Necrobutcher. “So when you put all these bad things together with bad psychological thinking and then you use symbols like the upside down crosses in the logo, to go a step further would be swastikas and stuff like that. Not swastikas, but stuff in that vein like the Totenkopf, a lot of bands used that. The path of exploring the darkness doesn’t necessarily make us into Nazis. Or Satanists; none of us [current members] are interested in any type of religion.”

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.

".. Titled Grand Declaration of War, it was divided into Parts II and III, and presented as the second and third chapters of a bigger work that had begun with Wolf’s Lair Abyss, the opening track even beginning with the same riff that closed that EP. But it was there that any similarities ended, the music and lyrics taking a bold step away from conventional black metal. A complex concept album with a somewhat futuristic aesthetic, Grand Declaration saw the band taking the unusual step of entrusting all songwriting duties to their newest member, who went on to oversee every facet of the record’s creation.

"Blasphemer basically had free hands writing all the music in Mayhem, we just tried to arrange our instruments,” Necrobutcher explains. “...It was big shoes for him to fill and all these negative comments that we should quit and stuff like this all the time didn’t help much, so we tried to build his confidence to release his potential—and then it did.”

“Wolf’s Lair Abyss was a bit more free,” considers Blasphemer. “I was pumping out the riffs that I had and people just hooked onto it and played along. After that I became more fussy with the drum patterns and had a lot of ideas that I would tell to Hellhammer. The other guys were very happy about it and who wouldn’t be—one guy to sit at home and do all the work?” he laughs, before clarifying “I think they just realized I had a fucked up thing going. I didn’t get any complaints so I just continued almost without any interference. That’s how I write music—I am probably a demanding musician to work [with] and I guess will always be, ’cos I have very strong opinions: it’s not just a riff, it’s so much more, it’s a very spiritual thing. That was a very mental album though… much more about thoughts than emotion.”

Grand Declaration takes the listener on a journey through what appears to be a cataclysmic final conflict and its aftermath, and though it features much of the furious aggression of the band’s earlier efforts, it is also far more dense, technical, and less straightforward than De Mysteriis or even Wolf’s Lair Abyss, packing every song with angular guitar lines, heavy detail, and precise rhythm work. Even more notable is the use of programming and electronics, these coming to the fore following the nuclear Armageddon that segues Part Two into Part Three."

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.

..."There was a lot of crap actually,” recalls Blasphemer. “I think Hellhammer got more shit than me. I mean, it was not like I forced my way into the band—I was asked and I accepted. I remember a couple of times when we were out he would end up in discussions, kind of defending why he did this [restart Mayhem]. People were not that convinced and were certain that we would do this to go out and earn as much cash as possible. But with time it sort of bounced off because we did nothing. I mean, I joined in October ’94 and we did not play until ’97, we were just rehearsing all the time.”

“We got no support at all basically,” confirms Necrobutcher. “Nobody was excited. People asked how we could go on in Mayhem without Euronymous. A lot of people said that in the beginning. We felt that the only way to shut their face was to release good shit… That’s why we rehearsed for four years.”

Featuring four songs—“I Am Thy Labyrinth,” “Fall of Seraphs,” “Ancient Skin,” and “Symbols of Bloodswords”—along with an electronic intro track, the opus remains one of the band’s most intense recordings. Frequently high-paced, it is a mass of distorted bass, searing guitars, and blisteringly fast but detailed percussion, all topped off by the inhuman screams of Maniac. Retaining the single-minded and often linear fury of De Mysteriis, the EP is nonetheless more technical and calculated, with unusually complicated drum patterns and guitar work breaking up the furious assaults.

“When you rehearse old songs as often as we did in those early years you begin to understand the patterns,” reflects Blasphemer, “and I think subconsciously I wanted to have some of the similarities from [De Mysteriis]. But at the same time it has this weirdness, the weird timings, ’cos I was always into that technical side. It was a combination of what I did and the older Mayhem stuff.”

“It was clearly aggressive people playing aggressive music,” comments Necrobutcher. “Negativity, drinking a lot… a bunch of pissed-off guys you know? Hellhammer was the only one who had a job—he was working as night guard so it didn’t collide with the rehearsals—so we were poor, piss-poor ’cos we didn’t do anything else but the band.”

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.

"...Corpsepaint we invented,” Necrobutcher states unequivocally. “That term, Dead actually came up with that from the days when he was in Morbid. The name corpsepaint was never used by the bands who used paint like Celtic Frost, King Diamond, Alice Cooper, Kiss or any other bands that used this sort of makeup. They weren’t painting themselves to look like they were dead, just to look evil or cool. With corpsepaint today, I don’t see any corpse … it’s to look cool or evil … [With Dead] it wasn’t like dark, it was green, decomposition colors, snot coming from the nose…” 

“I was in the studio when Dead recorded his only studio vocals for Mayhem and I will never forget it,” recalls Maniac. “His dedication was something that was very hard to come by even then, let alone these days. I had to hold a bag of dead crows for him when he was singing so he could sniff it for the right atmosphere. These crows had been in the ground for quite some time when he dug them up. His voice was really of another world. Those two are still my favorite Mayhem tracks.”

While it’s still hard to say if Pelle felt the need to live up to the “Dead” character, or whether the band gave him an outlet for his extreme tendencies, it does appear that his unbalanced outlook helped shape the direction Mayhem was taking, with the extremity of his behavior certainly appreciated by the rest of the band. 

“Weird is not the right word,” Euronymous explained in an interview with Morbid zine. “I honestly think DEAD is mentally insane. (He knows I am writing this!) Which other way can you describe a guy who does not eat in order to get [a] starving wound? Or have a T-shirt with funeral announcements on it? I’ve always wanted to have a guy like that in the band.” 

Thanks largely to Dead and Euronymous, who appear to have spurred each other on, the humor apparent in the band’s early days was quickly disappearing, and the tongue-in-cheek approach to over-the-top gore subjects was replaced by a more straight-faced exploration of evil and Satanism, along with more nihilistic offerings."

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson. 

"...Infamously, Euronymous considered eating parts of Dead’s brain, but claimed that he changed his mind due to its condition. As he stated in The Sepulchral Voice zine, “I have never tried human flesh. We were going to try it when Dead died but he had been lying a little too long.” Instead he and Hellhammer fashioned fragments of Dead’s skull into necklaces, with further pieces sent to other friends and contacts of the band, including Morgan of Marduk and Christophe “Masmiseim” Mermod of Samael. More controversially, the pair developed the images of Dead’s body that had been taken by Euronymous, who openly planned to use these for Mayhem artwork. “I must add that it was interesting to be able to study (half) a human brain and rigor mortis,” he explained in one letter. “The pictures will be used on the Mayhem album.”

“I think the way people took it was absolutely wrong,” recalls Metalion. “No one really had an idea what was going on, so it was hard for people to deal with this in a proper way. [There was] a lot of stupid stuff, like Euronymous and Hellhammer wearing those necklaces of his brain. I think that people put on a tough mask and really went with the black metal lifestyle.”

“It’s like the whole black metal scene was traumatized with Mayhem and Dead and all that,” considers Snorre Ruch, the pioneering founder of Stigma Diabolicum/Thorns who also became the second guitarist in Mayhem. “There were a lot of unfortunate things happening to a group of people who were already on the sideline. Øystein was a key figure in the scene [and] he handled it by sending skull fragments to his friends. I received a skull fragment with a letter saying, ‘Now Dead has gone home,’ writing it like it’s something positive, something to take advantage of and he was trying to sell the story to the tabloid press, it was really dragging him down I think.”

The disrespect Euronymous showed toward Dead proved to be the final straw for Necrobutcher, who cut all ties with the guitarist. “First of all I grieved like hell ’cos I loved the guy, he was my brother, one of my best friends. But the reaction from Øystein was not treating him like a friend, but as a piece of shit. He wanted to portray him as a crap idiot motherfucker. Didn’t want to go to the funeral, wanted to exploit the photos, all shit like that, so we were very divided in that way. Dead wasn’t just a fucking idiot, he was a really good friend, a really good guy, a lot of people loved him, so it devastated a lot of people. Pelle’s brother called me recently for the first time—he had plucked up the courage to call me eighteen years later—and the whole family is still completely traumatized.”

Euronymous arguably did represent Dead in a particularly cynical and callous manner, treating his death as a sort of statement of intent against the rest of the metal scene, and one that appeared to fit in and promote Euronymous’ own ideals. He even told The Sepulchral Voice, “When Dead blew his brains off it was the greatest act of promotion he ever did for us… It’s always great when someone dies—it doesn’t matter who.”

Source: Dayal Patterson, Black Metal: The Evolution of the Cult.

"...The shop did indeed attract a lot of new fans, many of whom looked up to Euronymous. Respect undoubtedly crossed over into idolization for some who, having not known him in earlier, less “evil” times, had something of a one-sided impression. With his old friends Manheim and Necrobutcher gone, Euronymous was able to preach an increasingly extreme and rigid manifesto and present himself as he wished to be seen, free of the constraints older contacts might have placed on him.

“There would be many kids, and I think Euronymous loved it too,” recalls Apollyon, “lots of followers who would do anything for him. There were lots of bands and guys who brought their lunchboxes just to sit there all day and be with Euronymous.”

Says Necrobutcher, “When I was out of the picture nobody knew who he was. So he could put on this fake thing. Put on this robe, paint his face white and say stuff that had no truth in it.” Manheim agrees: “When you are close with people that have been living with you for many years and know what you really are, you just can’t try to be something you are not—” Necrobutcher interjects: “—’cos your mates would immediately pick up on it and say, ‘What the fuck are you saying?’” “Right,” says Manheim, “you will be exposed. But at the time when Euronymous was very extreme we still had a lot of contact. He could call me, we were talking about music, and all kinds of things, he was normal. The day after he could give you a call and he’d have friends over at Helvete and he’d be talking about burning churches like a different person. He’d be playing a role and he could do that, as there was nobody to correct him.”

“He was trying to convince himself and people around him that he was purest evil and Satanic and all that shit,” says Snorre Ruch. “I don’t know how many people fell for it, but the media liked it.”

Outwardly, and most noticeably in interviews, Euronymous continued to propagate an extremely evil image, becoming increasingly cold and heartless in his statements. “I have no friends, just the guys I’m allied with, if my girlfriend dies I won’t cry, I will misuse the corpse,” he told Norwegian publication Beat. When asked about the humorous elements within Deathcrush, he explained, “That was then. Now we mean partying is bad. It’s better to sit and cut yourself, than to go out and have fun… It’s many years since I managed to feel love. This is just the way it is. This is a main concept.”

Source: Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson.