Mayhem: Deathcrush (Black on Black)
Purchased used at The Attic
The spring semester ended on Friday and I had to travel east this weekend, Pittsburgh to Hanover to Baltimore and back. With those things now lifted (particularly the academic semester) I'm feeling some weight off my shoulders and I intend to post her more often. That again brings up the question of why even write here in the first, if my average viewing normally hovers around five. (Hello Jason, David, Adam.) As I've written before, I'm doing it in part for the discipline itself, in part of to give purpose to this large library of LPs and CDs I have amassed.
So here's this nasty little piece of business, a reissue of Mayhem's debut EP Deathcrush. Not in my general wheelhouse, to reference an overused cliché. I found the book Lords of Chaos interesting, though it's more of an oral/cultural history and true crime book than about the music. It largely tells of the Norwegian Black Metal scene, dating back to the late 1980s (this record was originally from 1987). I found the book went astray a bit trying to give some history to Paganism, and is best when it stays with the narrative of the scene.
The story, semi-fictionalized in the Lords of Chaos feature film*, centers on the band Mayhem, its bandleader Euronymous, and the increasingly destructive and violent activities of members of the scene. The music was only a component of what they were doing. Euronymous and one-time friend and bandmate Varg Vikernes/Count Grishnackh, started burning down historical old Christian churches. It's not a big spoiler to mention that Varg would eventually murder Euronymous in cold blood.
Never let it be said that I celebrate these things, but I do find the record to be an interesting cultural artifact from a self-created (albeit destructive) culture. I mean, what is it to try to make the most evil sounding music possible? Was that not enough? Was what happened with Euronymous, Varg, and other players in the scene inevitable?
I find a correlation between the destruction and murder by Varg and others with the January 6 rioters. That is to say, without wanting to sound like I'm downplaying what happened, it all seems to me to be cosplay gone to insane extremes. Did Varg and Euronymous really believe they were going to stage a war on Christianity? It's utterly ludicrous. I'm ultimately not certain what any of them truly believed, I can only read their bluster. A point made by one band member was, why burn down these beautiful, historic buildings? (He follows that with an especially racist comment, which I won't repeat.) Likewise, did these January 6 rioters really believe they could overthrow the workings of the United States federal government? That also resulted in people's deaths. It's amazing what people will let themselves believe sometimes, though I should never assume that I can't also at times be led to believe something beyond logic. I'd like to think I'm level headed and reasonably skeptical enough not to fall for ideas that are patently ridiculous.
And what of the record? What of Euronymous' desire to make the most evil music possible? Well, it comes off as a bit conventional to my ears. Metal, like Electronica as a category, seems to have splintered into many dozens of descriptive sub-genres. I can't be entirely certain I'm using the right name, but Mayhem at this time sound like a bit of early speed metal with a certain hardcore punk rock flavor. That latter is due to the short song structures and decided lack of guitar solos. Somewhere in the book I think there's mention of them being fans of Dead Kennedys, in addition to bands you'd expect like Venom and Bathory.
Weirdly, the opening of the record is a Conrad Schnitzler electronic piece, "Silvester Anfang". I don't know why or what the circumstances were.
I can't help but get a laugh out of the band lineup and desciptions: Maniac on gutpuking, Euronymous on deathsaw, Manheim on hellhammers (later replaced by a guy with the stage name Hellhammer), Messiah on iron lungs (for the recording session), and funniest of all, Necro Butcher on 4-string crushfuck. Yeah, all right. The band went through a great number of personnel changes in its brief Euronymous period. This was all before Count Grishnackh came and went on bass, to form his own recording project Burzum, and of course the vocalist Dead. Dead's suicide is a major component to the scene's story.
An original copy of this record in its first pressing (Posercorpse Records) has fetched over $5300 on Discogs.com, and even the 1993 Deathlike Silence Productions reissue has sold for nearly $1000. I imagine Thurston Moore has one of those pressings, who is a notably record collector who I've seen wearing Mayhem swag on more than one occasion.
*Regarding the Lord of Chaos film: it was largely panned. I didn't hate it but I had the same opinion of it as My Friend Dahmer, which was based on a graphic novel I also read. The parts of each movie I liked the best were when the narrative stayed closest to what I understand the facts of the story to be. That is, when the story was clearly more fictionalized, I liked it less. I understand that it's a feature film and shouldn't be mistaken for a documentary-style depiction of events. Fictionalized elements are going to happen for the sake of a feature film. Nonetheless, grim as they both may be, the true stories in both cases are really interesting and maybe don't need much dramatic embellishment.
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