Mayhem (band)
Mayhem is a Norwegian black metal band formed in Oslo in 1984. They were one of the pioneers of the Norwegian black metal scene, and their music has profoundly influenced the black metal genre. Mayhem's early career was marked by controversy, primarily due to their notorious live performances, the 1991 suicide of vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin ("Dead"), and the 1993 murder of guitarist Øystein Aarseth ("Euronymous") by former member Varg Vikernes ("Count Grishnackh") of Burzum.
Quotes about Mayhem
[edit]- That’s why we started to wear our hair all black. We were singing about Satan and sadism, and everything that was wrong like torture and stuff like that — the opposite of hanging around at the beach [...] We were looking for perversity and craziness.
- Necrobutcher of Mayhem [1]
- [Euronymous] had the belief, the more extreme the better, the more unbelievable the better. [...] Then you have someone like Vikernes who comes in and starts taking it at face value, saying, ‘We can’t just talk about this stuff. We’ve got to do it.’ It was the combination of the two of them meeting that pushed things over the edge.
- The arrival of Mayhem draws, for many people, a historical line in the sand for black metal. As arguably the first band of the genre’s second wave, here was an outfit who saw black metal as a genre in itself. Where forebears like Bathory, Venom, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost were separate bands doing their thing with very little contact or common ground, Mayhem pulled all these parts together to create something whole.
- Mayhem is arguably the most infamous part of the early Norwegian black metal scene, and although they’re largely known for their violent history, they’ve also produced some bona fide black metal bangers. Case in point: the immensely popular “Freezing Moon” from 1994’s seminal De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas.
