While there is no doubt that Mayhem have evolved from their earliest days, the band (this year celebrating their 40thanniversary) have reached a stage in their career where their sound is firmly established. As such, their latest opus, Liturgy of Death, brings few surprises, but it does find the band at the peak of their not inconsiderable game, nodding to the past whilst keeping a scaly eye on the future.
Clocking in at fifty minutes and spread over just eight tracks, the album finds the band exploring the darkness at a leisurely pace, the focus often on atmosphere over aggression, as might be expected from a dark liturgical work.
The album opens with the haunting Ephemerial Eternity, a seven-and-a-half-minute exercise in tension and release. At the outset, we find ourselves in a ruined church, a blasphemous choir soundtracking our every move. It takes over a minute for the band to shatter the ambience, the howling guitars and searing screams slowly coalescing into something that is both brazen and beautiful. This is Mayhem in excelsis, and it sounds every bit as mesmerising as the title implies.
Having got the album off to a remarkable start, Mayhem waste little time taking the listener deeper into the void with Despair. Dominated by Hellhammer’s impossibly fast percussive blasts and given weight by Attila Csihar’s diverse vocalisations, it combines black metal fury with elements of doom and neo-classical with immersive effect. It’s followed by the similarly paced Weep For Nothing, which initially adds to the hypnotic aura the band are weaving, However, as the piece progresses, dissonant elements are added, distinguishing the song from its predecessor as the band employ a more familiar, if somewhat apocalyptic, black metal approach.
The band remain firmly on message for Aeon’s End, a shorter, sharper piece that employs frozen riffs as Atila’s strident voice rings out from the heart of the maelstrom. As the track progresses, it even finds a little time to groove, the surging rhythms pushing the riff at a pace custom made for headbanging, although this is but the calm in the heart of the storm. Rather darker is Funeral Of Existence which slows the pace, allowing the doom-laden atmosphere of the opening number to creep back in like a dank fog. It’s an effective number and, while it does pick up the pace considerably, it never loses the potent atmosphere that set it apart in the first place.
Following the business-as-usual outpouring of Realm Of Endless Misery, a fine, if rather by-numbers black metal blast, the hyper speed riffing of Propitious Death reminds us of the demonic talent that lies at the heart of Mayhem, the swirling riffs raging around Atila’s scabrous rasp. Unlike its predecessor, it finds the band exploring a range of rhythms and tempos, and the result captures a sense of grandeur not unlike that of Emperor.
The album ends with the epic-length The Sentence Of Absolution. It hauls itself, fittingly enough, from the sound of an oncoming storm, the howling winds echoed in the frozen riffs and tribal percussion. When it does pick up, it proves to be a more dissonant piece, all the harder for the treble-heavy guitars the band deploy here. With Atila lurking in his lower range, it’s arguably the album’s most harrowingly unique piece, and it provides Liturgies of Death with a suitably evocative finale.
You probably already know whether this album is for you. Fans of Mayhem, and of black metal in general, are likely to love it; the rest of the world is likely to remain ambivalent to its charms. Certainly, if you have not already succumbed to the cult of Mayhem, there is little here that will change your mind, for the band offer only minor fluctuations to the formula.
Overall, Liturgy of Death is at its best when the band embrace the darkly hypnotic fringes of their sound. With a number of memorable moments and possessed of a truly epic closing piece, Liturgy of Death is a worthy album that proudly celebrates 40 years of chaos, whilst promising many more years to come. 8.5/10
