Mayhem - Esoteric Warfare
You’ve got to get a tickle out of it when, inevitably, any cumstain that writes a Mayhem review takes that same juvenile cheap shot at all Mayhem detractors. Apparently, we’re all just stuck in the past. We don’t like Mayhem anymore because it isn’t true (almost always read “trve” or “troo” for maximum douchebag effect). Then they call us horrible names, like “purists.” It seems our beef with Mayhem doesn’t stem from all three of their post-DMDS full-lengths sucking raw shit through a straw. Nope, it’s because the calendar doesn’t say 1994 anymore. We don’t despise Grand Declaration of War due to it being anti-memorable, zero-effort noise, it’s because no churches were burnt down. We only call Chimera a plastic, lame abomination because there weren’t any murders or suicides on that one, and our poor reception of Ordo ad Chao has absolutely nothing to do with the album sounding like it was recorded in my ass. It’s because we only want to hear those same 15 songs the band wrote from 1984-1996, and we only want to hear them when people are blowing fire and stabbing dudes in forests. Sorry, that’s just how we are… or more accurately, that’s just how people with no friends who still live with/off their parents assume we are. But things that walking abortions write that piss me off aside, Esoteric Warfare has completely shattered my (lack of) expectations. That is to say, it isn’t bad. It isn’t great, so don’t let any lifelover convince you it is, but it isn’t bad. It actually sounds like a band, as in a cohesive unit, writing songs, which is something that hasn’t pertained to Mayhem since 1997’s excellent Wolf’s Lair Abyss EP. (Strange… I like that one and Dead and Euronymous aren’t on it…) Get this: the drums actually sound like drums! There are —hope you’re sitting down for this one— actual riffs! New guitarist Teloch (Nidingr, NunFuckRitual) has exceptional skill and is not content to coast on white noise in between 4-trick juggling. All of the instruments are audible. I repeat, all of the instruments are audible! That includes Atilla’s trademark vocals. He sounds much better here, but still far away from his best. Twenty years away to be exact. With a voice so bewitching, less is truly more and more is truly less. Alas, I’ve listened to this album over a dozen times and not one song sticks. Still, I have to applaud these guys. It’s taken them 30 years, but they’re starting to nail some of the fundamentals. They’ve remembered how to make songs, now they just have to remember how to make them memorable.
Of course, these finger-on-the-pulse-of-the-working-class critics will see right through me. My real problem with this record is that Blasphemer is gone now. Because, y’know… that’s what single 35-year olds with a mountain of debt, working 45 hours a week, treading water check-to-check are most concerned with… what Blasphemer’s up to.
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