8 Bit Mayhem
| 8 Bit Mayhem | |
|---|---|
| Origin | UK |
| Genres | Black metal/Bitpop/chiptune |
| Years active | 2007-present |
| Website | http://www.myspace.com/8bitmayhem |
| Members | Pro-Scripter Hackus, Render-red Vikingchin, I.T. |
8 Bit Mayhem is a chiptune/bitpop artist from Great Britain that parodies both the music and specific cultural aspects of black metal music. 8 Bit Mayhem's music consists entirely of cover versions from famous and prominent black metal bands, including Cradle of Filth, Darkthrone, Mayhem and Burzum.
History
8 Bit Mayhem was formed in 2007 and recorded and released their first record, entitled De Mysteriis Dom Supernes in the same year. The band used online viral marketing and social networking sites including Myspace to promote their music. The satirical nature of the music, along with the perceived serious nature of the target bands being parodied, led to 8 Bit Mayhem becoming a popular craze amongst some online communities.
Parodies and "NESBM"
Much of the 8 Bit Mayhem content is designed to subvert various aspects of black metal culture seen as ludicrous or pompous. The band uses low resolution graphics for their album artwork, usually with an image that deliberately resembles some specific real black metal album. The titles, logo and even the band name itself are spoofs of existing bands' identities.
Following a similar style, the band has called their music NESBM. This parodies the style of black metal known as National Socialist Black Metal (or NSBM). The NES was a Nintendo computer from the 1980s. This conflict between the seemingly offensive or taboo source material with the childish and retro presentation is the source of much of the band's humour.
De Mysteriis Dom Supernes
In 2007, 8 Bit Mayhem recorded their first album De Mysteriis Dom Supernes. Both the title and the front cover artwork are direct spoofs of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem's own debut album from 1993 De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. The changed title references the popular Super Nintendo console, which was known as the Super NES amongst its user base, while the cover artwork is a still from Castlevania on the Nintendo NES, used under the creative commons licensing available to satirists and spoofers. In a popular move, the band opted to make all of their music free via an unlimited download; the link or the music itself was shared via several social networking sites, web forums, communities, and p2p networks.
The album covered 9 black metal bands in total: Nargaroth; Mayhem; Burzum; Cradle of Filth; Emperor; Ulver; Von; Darkthrone, and Enslaved.
Follow up work
The band followed up the album with a two track release the following year. Following a similar pattern in style and presentation of the previous release, 2008's Filosofamicom parodied Burzum in its design, specifically the album Filosofem. This time, the band merged the title with the Japanese name for the Nintendo NES, which is known as the Famicom (or "family computer"). The two tracks on this release were by Burzum and Nokturnal Mortum.
References in the media
Thanks in part to the comical nature of the band and its liberal position on copyright law, file sharing, and new media, 8 Bit Mayhem has attracted favourable publicity and attention.[1] In 2009 the film company Design Confederacy signed 8 Bit Mayhem up to feature on the soundtrack of their next film Legalize Murder 2[2] . The film, which is itself a parody of black metal culture, and shares much common ground with the band, is still in production as of 2010.
In 2009, 8 Bit Mayhem was included amongst a list of bands studied at the University of Edinburgh as part of their course Popular Music, Technology and Society.[3] 8 Bit Mayhem was cited as an example of an artist that reversed the accepted direction of media influence by applying techniques from video games (a comparatively new medium) in the more established medium of recording art.