Mayhem (band)
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| Mayhem | |
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 Mayhem in concert in Glasgow, 2004
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Oslo, Norway |
| Genre(s) | Black metal |
| Years active | 1984–1993 1995–present |
| Label(s) | Posercorpse Music (1987) Deathlike Silence (1993–1994) Misanthropy (1997) Century Media (1994–1996) Season of Mist/Necropolis (2000–present) |
| Website | www.thetruemayhem.com |
| Members | |
| Necrobutcher Hellhammer Attila Csihar |
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| Former members | |
| Maniac Euronymous Manheim Dead Messiah Blackthorn Count Grishnackh Occultus Nordgaren Torben Grue Blasphemer |
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Mayhem is a black metal band formed in 1984[1] in Oslo, Norway. The band name is taken from the Venom song, "Mayhem with Mercy".[2]
Many are disturbed by the constant controversy that has followed the various murders, suicides and other forms of violence that surrounded the band in the early years. Mayhem is considered one of the most controversial bands in modern musical history, especially due to the vast number of urban legends and myths surrounding their early years. These controversies have often overshadowed the music, even more so in recent years due in part to the Internet and magazine articles.
Over time Mayhem has evolved through a variety of black metal styles, delving at times into areas of dark avant-garde industrial and electronica.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years (1984–1990)
Inspired by groups such as Venom, Slayer and Celtic Frost[3], Mayhem was founded in 1984 by guitarist/vocalist Euronymous (Øystein Aarseth - then 'Destructor'), bass guitarist Necrobutcher (Jørn Stubberud) and drummer Manheim (Kjetil Manheim). Euronymous concentrated solely on guitar following the hiring of vocalist Messiah (Eirik Nordheim). In 1985, with Maniac (Sven Erik Kristiansen) replacing Messiah, the band went on to record their third release, following a demo and a rehearsal (Pure Fucking Armageddon and Deathrehearsal, respectively), Deathcrush, with Euronymous's newly formed label Posercorpse Music.
An initial release of 1,000 copies of Deathcrush quickly sold out, and was later repressed in 1993, by the Posercorpse Music label, since having been renamed Deathlike Silence Productions as a joint venture with Øystein's Oslo specialist record shop Helvete. Øystein's plans for this new outlet included that it was to be "...like a black church in the future. We've thought about having total darkness inside, so that people would have to carry torches to be able to see the records."[citation needed]
By mid-1988 both Manheim and Maniac had left the band: Manheim left to find a mainstream job, and Maniac, due to depression following a failed suicide attempt, was confined to a mental institution. After two brief replacements, their positions were filled by Swede Dead (Per Yngve Ohlin, previously of Morbid), and scene drummer Hellhammer (Jan Axel Blomberg). Dead, as suggested by his stage name, was melancholic by nature and fascinated by death, decay, and darkness.
According to Bård Eithun "He (Dead) wasn't a guy you could know very well. I think even the other guys in Mayhem didn't know him very well. He was hard to get close to. I met him two weeks before he died. I'd met him maybe six to eight times, all in all. He had lots of weird ideas. I remember Aarseth was talking about him and said he did not have any humour. He did, but it was very obscure. Honestly, I don't think he was enjoying living in this world."
By this point the band's lyrics had moved increasingly toward Satanism, darkness, depression and evil. A focal point of gigs at this time was the planting of pigs' heads on stakes, center stage, and Dead cutting himself with a knife[citation needed].
The new lineup with Dead and Euronymous quickly became the band's most notorious[citation needed]. After some live gigs in Norway, Germany (where Live in Leipzig was recorded), and Izmir, Turkey (the first-ever Black Metal gig in Asia) Mayhem started working on their first full length album: De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (Lord Satan's Secret Rites), though by the time of its eventual release the two cornerstone members would be dead.
[edit] Line-up 1991–1993
In April 1991, Dead was found dead at the age of 22, having suffered a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head and several lacerations to the wrists, inflicted by a knife he had bought that day. Dead committed suicide in a house he was sharing in Kråkstad with the other members of the band, and left a note saying "Excuse all the blood, cheers." Other members of the band claimed it was more extensive, also saying "The knife was too dull to finish the job so I had to use the shotgun." Euronymous was first to discover the body, and took a series of photographs of the corpse, one of which was later stolen and used as cover art for the bootleg album Dawn of the Black Hearts.
According to Occultus, who briefly took position as vocalist after Dead's suicide: "He (Dead) didn't see himself as human; he saw himself as a creature from another world. He said he had many visions that his blood has frozen in his veins, that he was dead. That is the reason he took that name. He knew he would die.."
The shotgun shells used had been sent to him by Bergen, Norway musician Varg Vikernes (aka Count Grishnackh; ex Old Funeral, sole member of black metal band Burzum, later convicted murderer of Euronymous). Euronymous was particularly cold and opportunistic about Dead's suicide; in interviews he claimed, speciously, that Dead had killed himself due to the rising popularity of death metal, the American movement Black Metal had risen against. Hellhammer claimed that Euronymous had taken pieces of Dead's brain and made a stew, in which he had put ham, frozen vegetables, and pepper: "He'd always said he wanted to eat flesh, so he figured this was an easy way." However, Euronymous later admitted that he had not actually eaten any part of Dead's body, though he had intended to. Euronymous also claimed to have collected and forged fragments of Dead's skull into necklaces, sending pieces to those he felt 'worthy' (amongst those rumoured to be in possession of such pieces are the members of Swedish black metal band Marduk & Abruptum). Hellhammer has said he made a necklace from Dead's skull fragments as well[citation needed].
In 1993, Live in Leipzig was released as the band's tribute to Dead. Dead's suicide affected Necrobutcher so much that he left Mayhem, thinning the band's ranks down to two.
Later that year, the recording of Mayhem's upcoming album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas resumed. In Dead's and Necrobutcher's absences, Attila Csihar handled vocals, with Vikernes on bass guitar. Blackthorn (Snorre Westvold, of the band Thorns)
Due to adverse media and police attention, Euronymous was forced around this time to close his scene focal point record shop Helvete.
On the morning of August 10, 1993, Vikernes travelled, along with 21 year old Blackthorn (Snorre Westvold, of the band Thorns), the seven hours between Bergen to Euronymous's apartment in Oslo. They created alibis, en route, by getting friends to rent a video locally in their names. Upon arrival, Vikernes fatally stabbed Euronymous with a knife, although Vikernes claims that Euronymous had been planning to kill him for quite some time, and that upon his arrival to Euronymous' apartment, Euronymous had attempted to attack him first. The autopsy revealed that Euronymous suffered twenty-three stab wounds: two to the head, five to the neck & sixteen to the back. However, Vikernes claims that Euronymous fell onto pieces of broken glass, from a lamp shade broken in the ruckus, which he says, attributed to the multiple puncture wounds.
He then stumbled and broke a lamp on the wall, probably with his head or arm, and fell into the glass fragments - in his underwear. I ran past him and waited. Snorre was still upstairs, and I had no idea how he would react to all of this. Perhaps it was a set-up and he was in on it? Perhaps he too would attack me? I didn't know. When Snorre came running he looked very scared and I just let him ran straight past me. I realized he was not a part of this, so I asked him if he was okay (because he certainly didn't look okay). By then Euronymous was back on his feet. He looked resigned and said: "It's enough", but then he tried to kick me again, and I finished him off by thrusting the knife through his skull, through his forehead, and he died instantaneously. The eyes turned around in his head and a moan could be heard as he emptied his lungs when he died. He fell down to a sitting position, but the knife was stuck in his head, so I held him up, as I held onto the knife. When I jerked the knife from his skull he fell forward, and rolled down a flight of stairs like a sack of potatoes - making enough noise to wake up the whole neighbourhood (it was a noisy, metal staircase).
– Varg Vikernes, A Burzum Story
Though initial suspicion pointed towards members of the Swedish scene, Vikernes had left key pieces of evidence, including a blood stained copy of a recording contract (used as the pretense for his visit to Euronymous). Within days Vikernes was apprehended by police and charged with the murder. He has continued to record for his one-man project Burzum while in prison. With only Hellhammer remaining, Mayhem effectively ceased to exist.
[edit] Later years (1994–2000)
In 1994, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas was released and formally dedicated to Euronymous. Its release had been delayed due to complaints filed by Euronymous' parents, who had objected to the presence of bass guitar parts played by Vikernes. Contrary to contemporary reports these were not re-recorded by Hellhammer and appear unblemished.
By late 1995 Hellhammer had decided to reform the band with the help of new guitarist Blasphemer (Rune Eriksen) and two previous Mayhem members - Maniac and Necrobutcher. The first release of this new lineup was a 1997 EP titled Wolf's Lair Abyss, and was followed by some live European shows. One of these took place in Milan, Italy, guest starring Attila Csihar, and was recorded for the Mediolanum Capta Est live album of that year. It has been noted by nearly all listeners that this lineup has been much more technical as well as adventurous and musically innovative.
In 2000 the band's second full-length CD, Grand Declaration of War was released. Strongly influenced by progressive and avant-garde metal, the album was concept-based, dealing with themes of war and post-apocalyptic destruction. Maniac largely abandoned the traditional black metal rasp for dramatic spoken-word monologue, with most of the songs sequencing seamlessly into one another. Reaction to the album was polarized. Some criticised the album for its avant-garde and electronic elements, which they perceived as pretentious, and for Maniac's vocals, which they perceived as inferior to Dead's and Attila's; others saw it as a laudable attempt to recreate and redefine black metal, with critic Brian Russ of BNR Metal going so far as to call it "really the first cohesive work the band has ever done" and "a fitting culmination to their career thus far." In retrospect, the electronic elements of the album were often heavily overstated by its detractors, appearing notably in only a single track, "A Bloodsword and a Colder Sun." It should also be noted that from Wolf's Lair Abyss up to the present, Blasphemer has written all of the music for Mayhem's releases. Maniac wrote the lyrics from the reformation of the band until his departure in 2004.
[edit] Return (2004 - present)
After a four year silence, Mayhem released Chimera in 2004. It showed a return to their earlier raw and brutal style, but with considerably better production values than earlier releases. Chimera still maintained a progressive edge. In 2004, Maniac was forced out of the band, according to Necrobutcher, because of stage fright-induced alcoholism. Necrobutcher also noted a violent encounter between the singer and Blasphemer, because of this, during which the guitarist kicked Maniac down a flight of stairs and smashed his head facefirst twice into a wall. Attila Csihar was reinstated as his replacement.
The band's fourth album, titled Ordo ad Chao (Latin for "Order to Chaos"), was released on April 16, 2007 (April 17 in the United States and Canada) on Season of Mist Records. The single, "Anti," can be heard for free on the band's official MySpace, and is the last of eight tracks on the album. Ordo ad Chao contains a much rawer sound than the rest of the band's recent work; the drums are not equalized and the mix is notably bass-heavy (black metal is usually criticized for its lack of bass). Despite this, the album continues the band's experiments with unorthodox song structures, with "Illuminate Eliminate," at 9:40, being the band's second longest track to date (behind Grand Declaration of War’s "Completion in Science of Agony (Part I)" at 9:44). The album received strong reviews and, peaking at #12 on the Norwegian charts, was the band's highest-charting album to date.
The band was scheduled to perform a mini U.S. tour during mid-2007, but was forced to cancel due to Hellhammer's broken right arm.
Recently, Mayhem were mentioned in a television segment about controversy for MTV NEWS concerning the infamous cover of the Dawn Of The Black Hearts bootleg.
In early 2008 Mayhem's Ordo Ad Chao won the Spellemann award (the largest and oldest of Norway's music awards shows) for Best Metal Album of 2007 beating out Dimmu Borgir, Audrey Horne and Red Harvest.
In April 2008, Blasphemer decided to leave the band. His comments on the matter: "The main reason behind this conclusion lies in the fact that I simply don't see any future for me in the band anymore, at least not a future I'd like to participate in over the coming years. I've been playing my part in the band now for more than 13 years already, having composed, produced and released several albums with great vision, dedication and craftsmanship, to arrive at this crossroad of opposites. Sooner or later, all things comes to an end, and in my case, this circle is complete."[4]
[edit] Controversy
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This section does not cite any references or sources. (May 2008) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
[edit] Ohlin's suicide
In Mayhem's early years, vocalist Maniac was replaced by Per Yngve Ohlin. Ohlin also went by the stage name Dead. He moved to Norway from his home country of Sweden. He played vocals for Mayhem for years. Throughout his stay in Norway, Ohlin showed signs of mental illness. It was believed that when he was young he went Ice Skating with a friend and fell into the ice. Since then he had visions of his blood being frozen and of Ohlin's death. Since then, Ohlin had been manically depressed which led to his suicide on April 8th 1991. His autopsy showed he slashed his wrists and neck the proceeded to cause a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head. Lead guitarist Euronymous found Ohlin dead, but before reporting the death to the police, he went into town, bought a disposable camera, returned, rearranged the scene then, took pictures which would later be used on a bootleg album, Dawn of the Black Hearts. It is also stated in a 1998 edition of Maxim magazine that Euronymus made a necklace from pieces of Ohlin's skull.
[edit] Murder of Euronymous
Mayhem lead Guitarist Øystein Aarseth, aka Euronymous had, at one time in the early 90's, associated himself with Varg Vikernes a.k.a Count Grishnackh of the one man band Burzum. Vikernes had not yet reached any underground fame until Euronymous signed Burzum to his record label Deathlike Silence. Together the two opened the black metal record store Helvete. Violent tension grew in 1993 when Euronymous permanently shut down the store while Vikernes was in jail on suspected arson. When released Vikernes when to the home of Aarseth with Thorns Guitarist Snorre Ruch. Ruch stayed out side and smoked a cigarette while Vikernes proceeded upstairs to Aarseth's apartment. After a physical struggle in his house Aarseth was stabbed several times on the way downstairs. Snorre entered the building in time to witness the chase. He passed out in fright of what he saw. Vikernes aided his scared friend when Aarseth tried to resolve the fight peacefully. Aarseth was stabbed in the forehead when he attempted to kick Vikernes in the head after the attempted truce. Vikernes and Snorre went home and the corpse of Euronymous was not found until the following morning. The death had made front page headlines. Vikernes was arrested a few weeks later when Snorre was questioned by the police and confessed. Vikernes was convicted of murder and arson, after further evidence was found of the fires. Snorre was sentenced to 8 years for being considered an accomplice, since he drove Vikernes to and from the murder scene. The death caused Mayhem to break up since the only member left of Mayhem was Hellhammer, not to be confused the the heavy metal band "HellHammer".
[edit] Bergen concert mishap
In May 2003, Mayhem made headlines again when a Mayhem fan, Per Kristian Hagen, landed in the hospital with a fractured skull after being hit by a severed sheep's head that had flown into the audience from the stage. Assault charges were filed, but the band considered it to have been entirely accidental. [5] [6] [7].
[edit] Mayhem in popular culture
- In the E4 sitcom The In-Betweeners, a poster for the album Ordo Ad Chao is visible on the wall of the students' common room.
[edit] Members
| (1984–1985) | |
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| (1986) |
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| (1986–1987) |
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| (1987) |
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| (1988–1991) "Classic" lineup |
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| (1992) |
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| (1993) |
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| (1993) |
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| (1994) | SPLIT |
| (1995–1997) |
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| (1997–1998) |
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| (1998–2004) |
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| (2004-2008) |
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| (2008-present) |
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[edit] Current
- Necrobutcher – bass guitar (1984–1991, 1995–present)
- Hellhammer - drums (1988–1993, 1995–present)
- Attila Csihar - vocals (1993, 2004–present)
[edit] Former
- Messiah - vocals (1986)
- Manheim - drums (1984–1987)
- Torben Grue - drums (1987)
- Kittil Kittilsen - vocals (1987)
- Dead - vocals (1988–1991) (deceased)
- Occultus - vocals, bass guitar (1992)
- Count Grishnackh - bass guitar (1993) (incarcerated)
- Blackthorn - guitars (1993)
- Euronymous - guitars (1984–1993) (deceased)
- Nordgaren - guitars (1997–1998)
- Maniac - vocals (1986–1987, 1995–2004)
- Blasphemer - guitars (1995–2008)
[edit] Discography
[edit] Studio albums
- 1987: Deathcrush
- 1994: De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
- 1995: Out From The Dark (recorded in 1991)
- 1997: Wolf's Lair Abyss
- 2000: Grand Declaration of War
- 2004: Chimera
- 2007: Ordo Ad Chao
[edit] Live albums
- 1993: Live in Leipzig (recorded in 1990)
- 1995: Dawn of the Black Hearts (recorded in 1990)
- 1999: Mediolanum Capta Est
- 2001: Live In Marseille 2000
[edit] Compilation albums
- 1995: A Tribute To The Black Emperors (contains songs by Morbid also)
- 2001: European Legions (live songs and outtakes from Grand Declaration of War)
- 2001: U.S. Legions (live songs and outtakes from Grand Declaration of War)
- 2002: The Studio Experience (contains all previous albums)
- 2003: Legions of War (contains Grand Declaration of War and European Legions)
[edit] Demos and singles
- 1986: Pure Fucking Armageddon
- 1987: Deathrehearsal
- 1996: Freezing Moon/Carnage (recorded in 1990)
- 1997: Ancient Skin/Necrolust
[edit] Videography
- 1998: Live In Bischofswerda
- 2001: European Legions: Live In Marseille 2000
- 2002: Mayhem - Cult of Aggression (Norweigan/Swedish documentary by Stefan Rydehed)
- 2005: Appearance in Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
- 2005: Appearance in BBC One World episode Death Metal Murders
- 2007: Pure Fucking Mayhem (English documentary by Stefan Rydehed)
[edit] References
- ^ Moynihan & Soderlind (1998). Lords of Chaos (2nd ed.) Chapter 4, P59. Feral House. ISBN 0-922915-94-6
- ^ Moynihan & Soderlind (1998). Lords of Chaos (2nd ed.) Chapter 4, P54. Feral House. ISBN 0-922915-94-6
- ^ Moynihan & Soderlind (1998). Lords of Chaos (2nd ed.) Chapter 7, P238 Feral House. ISBN 0-922915-94-6
- ^ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1415240,00.html
In this interview, Euronymous states that the band formed in 1983[8]
[edit] External links
- Fansite
- Official website
- Mayhem on Encyclopedia Metallum
- Attila Csihar interview, 2007-12-18 - Part 1
- Attila Csihar interview, 2007-12-18 - Part 2
- Attila Csihar interview, 2007-12-18 - Part 3
- Attila Csihar interview, 2007-12-18 - Part 4
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