Metal Psalter Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Classic Review

Norway’s Mayhem offers up its first full-length studio release in the form of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, which loosely translates to “Lord Satan’s Secret Rites.” This is one of the more important black metal albums of all time, warts and all; it manages to hold its ground some sixteen years after its release, inspiring to a high, often criminal degree many a late-comer to the once primitive underground scene.

From the very beginning when “Funeral Fog” shatters the still of your psyche you recognize that this is leaps and bounds over 1987’s Deathcrush EP, which has more of a punk/thrash vibe. The absolute darkness is heard in both guitar tone and brutal Hellhammer drumming, not to mention Tormentor vocalist Atilla Csihar’s sinister vocals. With previous vocalist Dead (Per Ohlin) gone from suicide, the band had a dark cloud ever-present over it and guitarist Euronymous (Oystein Aarseth) obviously felt inspired, even though some of these tracks were written during Dead’s short tenure. It is no exaggeration to say that this album is truly of tremendous evil caliber, spawning literally thousands of clones over the last decade-and-a-half.

The songs are all quality black metal, destroying any thoughts of contrived or opaque compositions. What Mayhem captured here in eight songs was the absolute black metal offering of great song structure not reliant on recycled riffs or thin frivolity. Classics like “Freezing Moon,” “Life Eternal,” “Pagan Fears” and the title track showcase the brilliance of Mayhem, one of the founders of that notorious period in Scandinavian music history. It’s with complete honesty that I say that all eight tracks are of stellar design and near-perfect evil artistry, even with the flaws therein.

As for the production, well, the typically black metal collective of today revels in this “necro sound,” or bad production that De Mysteriis bassist and Burzum mainman Count Grishnackh (Varg Vikernes) continually espoused. For well-documented reasons the bass is purposely lowered in the final mix, making the overall sound somewhat muddy and weakened to my ears. Since there’s no hope of a remix for the album, it’s just something we’ll have to live with, as we have for all of these years. That said, the mix is not typically “necro” here; it showcases the guitar work quite nicely, even if the drums are a bit lost in the mixing. These little annoyances aside, the album is epic even by the harshest black metal standards.

Another point of contention is Atilla’s vocals, which usually has words like “awful,” “horrible,” “unlistenable” or “comical” attached to it. I myself find the experimental effort one of sadistic, even frightening resonance. The low, whispering, growling, sneering delivery is a far cry from Dead’s style, and I can just hear the collective jaws hitting computer desks everywhere when I say this performance from Atilla is among the best vocal efforts I’ve heard. To my ears, which are quite trained I assure you, they are just plain horrifying in spots, albeit also a bit muddied in the mix. Still, for Atilla to come in, throwing caution to the cold winds, and create an atmosphere of pure foreboding and fear I think he did a fantastic job. He certainly is not credited accordingly for adding to the cult status of this album.

All in all, Mayhem did a service to the black metal scene, and Aarseth had a real stranglehold on the sound that would become legendary and, sadly, trendy. The purest evil is to be heard on De Mysteriiis Dom Sathanas from beginning to end, and every bit of credit it gets all these years later is well-deserved simply because it set the tone for all of the evil we know and enjoy today in the genre, severely flooded as it is.

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I remember precisely where and when I purchased De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. As I’ve mentioned several times in various articles I was loyal to a handful of record stores in the 80’s and 90’s until the downloads and economy dried up these wondrous places one by one.

Record Swap in Homewood, Illinois in the summer of 1994 was my home away from home, and when I heard that the album was finally being released I called every week for two months and asked the owner John (bless this man’s patience) if it came in. After a jam session at a friend’s house one day we popped in and John smiled wide, as he usually did because I helped pay his rent many a month. He reached under the counter and pulled up the beautiful LP I had so patiently waited for. I remember feeling a wave of joy and child-like excitement rush through my entire body; man, I was stoked to get that album in my hands! I can still smell the album cover and the musty, welcome smell of the store to this day. That cover with a blue church under the brutal logo was just euphoric for me. I also grabbed a Death SS CD that day, as well as a used Warlock “Hellbound” LP (I remember the craziest things, I’m strange like that), but my prize was just begging to be played. I thanked John a zillion times, paid, hit the car and off I went, hitting the 294 expressway at about 75 m.p.h. all the way back to Oak Lawn. I played it about ten times that first day; by the end of the fourth time I had every riff memorized, every drum assault numbered and cataloged. It was one of those moments.

For my black metal experience, Venom was the first to introduce me to the genre in 1982. Hellhammer, Mercyful Fate, Running Wild, Sodom, Bathory, all of these bands kept the flame going for my impressionable ears for many years after. I was like a sponge, soaking up and registering every black metal sound I was hearing. I then ventured into thrash, speed…well, you know the drill. I’ll be honest I was not prepared for what was eventually going to happen in Scandinavia. Now, you have to remember, we heard our metal news and happenings through imported and domestic metal mags, pen pals, tape traders and band contacts all over the world; in a pre-Internet world things were about as primitive as the Ingalls’ family settling in Walnut Grove, Minnesota! I knew what was going on over there with the churches, the supposed black metal mafia, the threats against Deicide, Therion, Paradise Lost and other bands that dared venture into Norway. Yep, I admit to more than just idle fascination. Then when Varg Vikernes killed Oystein Aarseth in August, 1993, I knew the metal scene was going to be taken to task by more than one naysayer. It was a very…well, honestly, it was a strange period. As I recall it now, a lot of contacts I had both local and abroad were wondering what was going to happen to this scene that produced amazing acts like Darkthrone, Burzum, Emperor and Immortal. Surely Varg would be jailed or killed, we weren’t sure, and Mayhem would of course split up, leaving that wonderful album unreleased. After all, they wouldn’t release the album that featured the bassist who murdered the guitarist, right? Thankfully, on both counts, both Mayhem and Burzum emerged from the ashes.

Mayhem matured to the nth degree on De Mysteriis from the Deathcrush EP. The album is simply a musical landmark, no question about it. This modern mess of a genre we pick apart, weeding out the Aarseth clones, owes everything it enjoys today to Mayhem, Darkthrone and, ironically, Burzum. While I don’t think Aarseth was this guitar genius that most of the poser kids of today think he was, there is no doubt he was not only innovative, but instrumental in creating that speedy tremolo picking sound that is a staple of all black metal bands. When you hear that opening riff of the title track, how can you not sense the sheer brilliance of the so-called second wave of black metal? “Pagan Fears” still paints a fantastic picture of this blasphemous band recording in the darkness of Grieghallen shrouded in the suicide of Dead, the church burning escapades, and the eventual in-fighting that ended Aarseth’s life at twenty-five. When you paint such mental pictures you have attained the true black vibe the band was attempting to convey. Aside from the thin, somewhat muddy production the album is a perfect specimen of heavy metal’s DNA. There’s a couple of bootleg CD’s floating around of the entire album being played in rehearsal with Varg’s bass right up in the mix, as well as Atilla’s own limited edition Life Eternal, which has a better mix of five songs from the album. For such an important album ingest as much as you can.

Like him or hate him as a person and businessman, Aarseth was important and deserving of the credit he gets for helping create the scene. I will not offer my opinions on his murder at Varg’s hands because it’s simply irrelevant here; the music is what he should be remembered for in this context. Both times I ordered records from him back in the day he sent them in a timely manner and always with a nice letter asking about the American death metal scene and things (also nicely asking for his stamps back on my next order as I recall). I certainly wonder what it would have been like had he been alive today to see what a sewer of trendiness the black metal movement has become.

De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is an integral part of metal history for many reasons, chief among them the circumstances involving Aarseth’s death shortly before its release. What should make this album the true classic it is has little to do with the notoriety surrounding its players, yet still we yield to the salaciousness of the tabloid-heavy story behind the band; we’re drawn to it like a moth to the flame because, honestly, we love a good ghost story that infiltrates our sense of safety. In that regard you couldn’t script a better ending if you tried.

Truth is truly stranger than fiction.