Mayhem – Liturgy Of Death
Mayhem – Liturgy Of Death
Century Media
Release Date: 06/02/2026
Review by Jon Deaux
7/10
After four decades of terrorizing their mothers into forming support groups, Mayhem, the Most Aggressively Norwegian metal band of Norway, expires with “Liturgy Of Death””. The music on this record is so despairing, so depressive, that the only service to the community you will provide by being there is as part of the removal of music itself. It’s not music; it’s an exorcism performed by three guys who actually believe ‘happiness’ bayonets the rights of happiness.
‘Ephemeral Eternity’ is the opener in the best sense with the flourish of the velvet rope tear in the funeral parlour. The name alone is a recipient of the award for the most oxymoronic use of the dictionary, but this song is the one they play in the holding area for Hell when you set an appointment for eternal torture and tormenting. The screamed vocals from the inimitable Atilla Csihar, who apparently gargles with the distilled purity of Norwegian winters laced with a squeeze of citrus fruit, is the perfect aperitif for this feast of miserable tunes.
‘Despair’ enters with its best formal wear for a funeral before it blowtorch-lights the buffet table on fire. The beat of Hellhammer’s drums is almost as if he’s telling the drums in the room that he’s unhappy with the drum, as well as its lineage, and a couple of Norse deities. The guitar is a musical rhythm of oppressive design that could very well be used for genuine wallpaper at a haunted house.
‘Weep For Nothing’ is the love-struck hymn for do-nothing happiness, which is Mayhem’s love offering to the world of doing nothing, as if it was all made with the same warmth as this break-up text in Old Norse, you see. But what could you possibly weep for in the first place? What is ‘Breathe’ all about? What was the use in you considering this album in your repertoire aimed at placing a smile on that face in the first place? Such questions, along with the harmony, go unanswered while the bass kicks in by NecroButcher in the mix, much like this one dramatic sea monster that’s always in a bad mood, but is perpetually in love with its eyeliner.
‘Aeon’s End’ is where a band considers “eternity” and says, “No, we’re not just gonna sit here and be depressing; we’ve gotta end all of eternity itself.” The Copernicus Principle of “the midsection that contains the best part” is in full force during the part where they remove your eyes from your skull during ‘Aeon’s End’ because what they are really trying to say is that they would play riffs that would make a gothic cathedral weep blood in surgical exactness by someone who has lost interest in swearing an oath to first, do no harm anyway. There is a guitar solo where a dude chimes in as if he is shrieking in Norwegian.
‘Funeral of Existence’ is six minutes of Mayhem in celebratory mode, of course, and a farewell to the very existence of the party ploy itself, and one that only the very best of these musicians of muscular nihilism, Norway’s finest, have come to be known. The arrangement, as if something that teeters on a precarious edge between each of us, is simply what a symphony orchestra would do if ever they’d struck the wrong turn in the Norwegian woods and then had the bright idea of going dark. And that meant, of course, literal darkness. Sometimes, they come close to a nearly pretty thing, only to be rejected in favor of the realization that, of course, we are not children and must feel the mere flicker of hope.
‘Realm of Endless Misery’ is the cherry on the sundae for this album, the crown jewel of its catastrophe, the raison d’être for its existence, the theme song for this dinner party from the depths of Hades. This is Mayhem at their tragedy-patterned trails of tears, penning a musical score that needs to be as expansive as a grave to house the life lived by a soul that found bliss through its walls of sound. This piece is a magnum opus of sonic ingenuity—it is a Gothic cathedral erected upon a foundation of shambled hopes and impossible drum patterns. It is also the longest piece, clocking in at a whopping seven minutes, as if a prescription-based dose of misery wasn’t quite a full course.
‘Favorable Death’ is like being invited to a dinner with Death himself who has laid a lovely table setting. This is what one may call the optimism in mayhem in Mayhem, death being a means to liberate oneself or better yet, a party favor. The solo solos in this masterpiece include enough devilish intentions to warrant being placed in an exhibition hall of medieval torture devices. This being the case in a hall in MoMA that features a gallery of sounds to rethink death, this music belongs in this hall to be exhibited.
‘The Sentence of Absolution’ is the ending of our dark little gathering as is common with Wagner operas that signify the end of the world, but, of course, with special effects that are light years removed from those productions, not to mention the obligatory liberal splattering of corpse paint, of course! However, it is certainly the heaviest and most evocative of the bunch, being roughly synonymous with being buried beneath a pile of velvet drapes during a bout of haute homicides, which is, of course, a truly charming affair, all told. The end.
The recording of “Liturgy of Death” is so precise that one can hear every individual molecule of sorrow on that album. It is no home recording of Mayhem, no. It is a recording of carefully designed mayhem that has been crafted to sonic perfection in a recording studio. It is very evident that some unfortunate soul spent an inordinate amount of time on ensuring that every detail of one’s spiritual dissolution is on that album.
The drums beat as though possessed with the spirit of all drummers ever created, if it is to be assumed that all drummers were angry at the point of their expiration and chose to channel such wrath into drum sets. His playing is technically perfect but drips with such a profound and divine level of raw emotional expression, as if one were watching a chef who happens to know a thing or two about emotions.
The amount of synch that Teloch and Ghul have attained regarding each other’s style of play is such that they are right on the border of telepathic abilities. This is either a really cool thing or a rather creepy thought, depending upon whether the Norwegian metal guitar player is supposed to be capable of telepathic abilities. They weave riffs like the web of a venomous spider, a more precise and less catchy term of spider silk itself and an utterly beautiful and deadly idea.
“Everything that happens in this cathedral of chaos is based upon the foundation that is the bass playing of Necrobutcher.” It is the safe beer-drinking pal that guarantees that each and every person gets home safe and sound to the loved ones that are waiting with bated breath for the next fright fix except for the fact that the record is a sonic exorcism.
And then there’s the Csihar. The screaming, growling, whatever-the-hell-it-is that approaches but never quite meets the standard of actual “noise” that could never, ever be likened to something that could come from an actual human throat! It’s opera of the scary variety that can best be likened in one, rather gruesome manner—and that would be that it sounded as if Luciano Pavarotti had been possessed by, and torn apart by, the very wronged spirits of the forest who had one or two scores to settle.
“Liturgy of Death” is a textbook extreme music band, a Ph.D. dissertation on all things dark, a love letter written through the blood of compromise.
This band has produced an album to be listened to at 11 (if your hi-fi amplifier can go that high). In a dimly lighted chamber with a plethora of black candles and poor musical choices. For your enemies. For your friends if they proclaim an affinity for every type of music under the sun. Not your cousin’s wedding, if you want a couple of direct heir’s in a couple of years.
FOR FANS OF: People who wear black to the beach, skull jewelry enthusiasts, People who thought “The Addams Family” was the ultimate goal, Metal snobs, Philosophy majors who left college to join the coven, People who have unironically declared “darkness is my old friend,” People who have more leather than the biker club, People who think flowers suitable to decorate are funerary.
NOT FOR: The waiting room of your therapist (maybe it actually could in the waiting room of your therapist), first dates unless it is SOME KIND OF VERY SPECIFIC FIRST DATE, birthday parties for kids, people who are big on their relationship with their neighbors, people who are tired of Marilyn Manson in their lives, people you are trying to impress in your business establishment, just not your grandma unless she is Norwegian.
LISTEN BEST WITH: a definite absence of any compelling engagement in the immediate coming hour; a fainting couch, preferably positioned in a dramatically effective spot; and perhaps a leather-bound notebook in which to record your progress into madness; UNLESS YOU ARE OPERATING HEAVY MACHINERY.
PAIRS WELL WITH: Black coffee (no cream, we’re not animals), existential literature, Norwegian winters, abandoned churches, your darkest thoughts, high-end red wine that looks like blood, everything that Edgar Allan Poe has written.
“Liturgy of Death” will appear wherever reputable distributors of thunderous damnation congregate. Not in a Christian bookstore.
This record wasn’t created for you to be listening to it while staring dramatically into a puddled windowpane contemplating your mortality, so you’d better check your pulse because you could be dead already. Which, as it’s written on side seven, is a lucky break.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Ephemeral Eternity
02. Despair
03. Weep For Nothing
04. Aeon’s End
05. Funeral of Existence
06. Realm of Endless Misery
07. Propitious Death
08. The Sentence of Absolution.
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