MAYHEM

DE MYSTERIIS DOM SATHANAS

ancient legends and dark moods, like how it looks when a thick heavy fog lies on the ground at funerals in Transylvania…” This is how Mayhem guitarist, published posthumously in 1994. These “dark moods” are so hauntingly evoked on Mayhem’s first studio LP, , that Transylvanian graveyard mist seems to exude out of the speakers, from the cold-open whipcrack of to the final truncated chord of the magisterial title track. Even if you hear the record with no knowledge of its hair-raising backstory, it distinguishes itself as the eerily cold, dark, fetid work of fucked-up, death-obsessed minds – albeit minds that can concoct tunes as flat-out catchy as .