The notorious Norwegian black-metal band has become so synonymous with extreme music and controversy that its reputation precedes it. The gory details, which made international headlines in the early 1990s, were chronicled in the 1997 book Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Metalheads know all about the murders and church burnings by now, but if you don't know about Mayhem's lore and happen to be squeamish, do not search its bootleg live album, The Dawn of the Black Hearts.
The most shocking thing about the cult collective, though, is that it’s persevered through it all. Mayhem is celebrating its fortieth anniversary as part of the current Decibel Magazine Tour, which comes to Summit on Monday, March 31. Mortiis, Imperial Triumphant and New Skeletal Faces are also on the bill.
Forty years is a big accomplishment for any artist. Mayhem almost considers it death-defying. “A couple of hundreds of years ago that was the average lifespan, forty years,” says veteran vocalist Attila Csihar. “It’s kind of surreal to say that number. It’s interesting how music keeps us in the same mindset. It’s surreal and it’s fucking great.”
The 53-year-old Hungarian musician wasn’t familiar with Mayhem in the 1980s, when its founding guitarist, Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth, ran his own record label, Deathlike Silence Productions, out of his record store Helvete (that’s Norwegian for “Hell”) in Oslo, Norway. At that time, Csihar was busy with Tormentor, another formative, early black-metal band.
“We were just inspired to do something different,” he recalls of his days with Tormentor. “In Hungary, we actually didn’t know about Mayhem. We were both too underground. But they had heard about us. There was some tape-trading, and some fan sent a tape to them.”
Little did Csihar know at the time, but he would become inextricably linked with Mayhem. Looking back, there were signs.
Vocalist Attila Csihar, corpse paint and all, has fronted the Norwegian black metal band for the past twenty years.
Courtesy Vfor5 Photography
Following the death of Mayhem's original vocalist, Per “Dead” Ohlin, in 1991, Csihar was recruited to help finish recording the band's debut full-length album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (Latin for “Of the Mysteries of Lord Satan”).
“That was a new thing. [The] first time I heard Deathcrush [Mayhem’s 1987 EP], it was good. But when I heard the Mysteriis demos, that was something really new and extreme and different than anything else I had heard before,” he recalls. “It was very advanced, at least to me, when I heard the demos.”
Recorded in 1992 and '93 and released in 1994, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is considered the preeminent black-metal album, featuring the lineup of Csihar, Euronymous, drummer Jan Axel “Hellhammer” Blomberg and bassist Varg "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes, who was convicted in the 1993 killing of Euronymous the same year the album came out.
Sonically and aesthetically, it set the template for what modern black metal would become — a barrage of blast beats, tremolos and death rattles, the auditory embodiment of entropy, cloaked in a costume of corpse paint and nihilism.
One defining characteristic is how Csihar chose not to imitate Dead’s signature vocal delivery. Instead, he went with a “darker” approach, he explains. To "get into the right mindset," he secluded himself behind curtains while recording so no one could see him, and surrounded himself with black candles. Given the results, there’s no questioning the methods.
“It’s a strong record for sure. Nobody could foresee what kind of affect it would make on the music scene. We just did it from our heart. I know it was a tremendous work,” says Csihar, who didn’t officially become Mayhem’s vocalist until 2004; he has appeared on four of the band’s six albums.
While most art imitates life, Mayhem's music always imitates death, seemingly through some sort of forbidden formula. But it works. Four decades on, the lineup of Csihar, longtime drummer Hellhammer, guitarists Morten “Teloch” Iversen and Charles “Ghul” Hedger, and founding bassist Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud is making headlines for all the right reasons. Mayhem turned infamy into immortality, and now, there’s no end in sight.
“I still feel the same energy. That’s the thing about this music, after forty years, this energy somehow consumes our minds,” Csihar concludes. “It’s still there.”
Mayhem, with Mortiis, Imperial Triumphant and New Skeletal Faces, 5:30 p.m. Monday, March 31, Summit, 1902 Blake Street. Tickets are $45-$75.
