Review - Mayhem

Mayhem
Esoteric Warfare

Well, I'm currently on a working holiday in the wonderful Norwegian town of Kvinesdal, so what better time to review the new album from one of the original Norwegian black metal bands. Mayhem have been putting out bleak, blistering albums since the '80s, and Burzum helped to create the entire sub-genre of black metal, so I came into this with high hopes, and I was not disappointed. The vocals are the standard raw, black metal shrieks; the band plays like a finely-tuned machine, shifting through different riffs, tempos and rhythms with ease; the lead guitar chimes like the bells of some unholy church - in short, this is everything one could expect from Mayhem. Every track on this album is a monster - every riff, every scream and every blast beat will strip the paint from your walls. The one downside is that towards the end of the record, the vocals become a bit intelligible, which is not something I look for in metal, as it's not a genre known for producing great lyricists. Still, other than that, det er en fantastisk album.

Rating: 8/10