Mayhem

Mayhem turned atmosphere into an aesthetic: abrasive tremolo picking, cavernous production and a deliberate sense of menace that helped define the sound and look of second-wave Norwegian black metal. Their early recordings made rawness feel purposeful rather than accidental — a deliberate technique that many later bands treated as the template.

The group’s first issued document, the Deathcrush EP, captures that raw intent: minimal, violent and unnerving. Central to the band’s early identity were a handful of characters who read like a manifesto in themselves. Euronymous (Øystein Aarseth) ran the influential label and shop that helped the scene flourish; Dead (Per Yngve Ohlin) turned stage presence into ritual with corpse paint and an obsession with personal extremes; Necrobutcher (Jørn Stubberud) and Hellhammer (Jan Axel Blomberg) provided the grim backbone that made the songs feel like collapsed churches and frozen landscapes.

Mayhem’s connections to earlier acts matter: the venomous snarl of Venom and the cold atmospheres of Bathory were clear signposts that shaped the band’s early approach. But the group also became central to the violence, myths and tragedies that surrounded the Norwegian scene in the early 1990s. The association with Varg Vikernes and Burzum — both musical collaboration and the later murder of Euronymous — is part of why Mayhem’s music and reputation are inseparable, for better and worse, from the era’s darker history.

Musically, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas remains the essential waypoint: it balances bleak, majestic songwriting with a production that still sounds like a ritual captured through a cracked microphone. Later records such as Grand Declaration of War and Chimera show a band willing to experiment with dissonance, structure and texture rather than simply repeating an established formula. Recent releases continue to trade in atmosphere and dramatic contrast, proving the project remained creatively restless.

For listeners curious about black metal’s origins, Mayhem is both a gateway and a warning: listen for the atmospherics, the songwriting shifts across albums, and the way a handful of individuals reshaped an underground music scene into a global phenomenon.