MAYHEM – Liturgy Of Death

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8.0

• Bands:
  MAYHEM
• Duration: 00:58:40
• Available from: 02/06/2026
• Label:

• Century Media Records

Streaming not yet available

It seems almost incredible, in a history spanning over forty years and as significant as that of Mayhem, to talk about what is 'only' the seventh album.
Few but good, we would say, although the Norwegian band has many detractors of everything released after “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas”.
Well, we are not among them, and above all we have always been struck, beyond the absolute outcome of each of their new recording chapters, by the search for new paths in continuity and respect for a name that is unique in the history of extreme metal; an objective that is fully respected in this new “Liturgy Of Death”, and which confirms how the last twenty years of their career, with Attila Csihar's return behind the microphone, has been a continuous crescendo.

Of course, not without hitches or hesitations: to go from “Ordo Ad Chao” to the full maturity of today, Mayhem had to work a lot (and also find a truly weighty and brilliant composer like Teloch), and equally their current status as a live war machine went through at least a couple of tours that offered very little in addition to the scenography. With only one constant on both fronts, namely the aforementioned Attila.
In some ways, we could reduce this review to the bare bones by praising his work: at the lyrical level, here of a rare philosophical depth, of the amazing vocal versatility, of the ability to withdraw where the guitars need to come to the foreground – never banal – and to be imperious where his theatricality can guide the band towards peaks of Male in musica.
From this point of view – and the singer confirmed it between the lines in the interview that you can read soon on our website – “Liturgy Of Death” is a sort of concept with extreme cohesion and continuity, in which the underlying theme of death, expressed as salvific, inevitable or terrifying depending on the songs, lives behind the interpretation of this cultured, curious and fearsome demiurge. Transfigured as needed, as physically happens to Attila himself when he goes on stage.
It is a record that moves sinuously like a long work in multiple segments, in which the alternation of violence, catharsis and intimate moments creates a rare tension: from the symphonic and abrasive movements of the opener “Ephemeral Eternity” (with guest Garm from Ulver), the record evolves into more riff-oriented songs in the excellent sequence of “Despair”, “Weep For Nothing” and “Aeon's End”.
In the central part, the pieces become less direct and at the same time more malignant, until the exhilarating rhythmic explosion of “The Sentence Of Absolution”. The two bonus tracks present in the limited edition, as in the past, are anything but fillers: the smoky “Life Is A Corpse You Drag” brings dissonant elements and an almost operatic inspiration back to the centre, while “Sancta Mendacia” is the credible declination in a Mayhem key of certain contemporary black/death impulses and closes the album with a clear and touching homage to Euronymous: “Your life reduced to obedience/And then/Converted into deathlike silence”.

If the previous “Daemon” had the merit of bringing Mayhem back into the spotlight with more direct, albeit refined, sounds, this new album manages to demonstrate that, having revised the harshness (unwelcome to many) of “Grand Declaration Of War” or certain initiate bombast of “Esoteric Warfare”, the five are perfectly capable of writing complex, layered, yet focused and high-impact records.
So whether you are doubtful about the integrity of this band, a die-hard fan of theirs or you find yourself somewhere (healthy, come on) in between, dedicate an hour of your time to this memento mori in music: you will come away marked in an unexpected way.