Mayhem — Grand Declaration Of War

This legendary cult black metal band who were one of the founders of the whole black metal soundand generation of bands starts a second youth with this "Grand Declaration of War". Now I won´t argue with you that the old Mayhem records were good or bad, that´s just a matterof taste but I thought that these Norwegian musicians were not good enough on theirinstruments to get me even remotely interested and enthusiastic with their music.I agree that it´s a part of the whole black metal sound, those distant guitars andhypnotizing riffs and beats, but I want more to keep me interested.Now with this album Mayhem starts from scratch again, leaving their 'famous' history behind and they´ve gone where no other black metal bandhas gone before.

It´s hard to describe in words in which direction Mayhem went with this record butI will try ofcourse. The whole album is a concept and divided in two parts,part 2 and 3, now you might think where did part 1 go, but you can find that one onthe Wolf´s Lair Abyss mini album which was released in 1997. It´s not hard to figure outwhat this "Grand Declaration of War" is about. The whole concept is a war against humanityas we know it right now (ofcourse it´s more detailed in the lyrics) which ends with a war(a big bang on the album, and the end of part 2) and then the rebuilding of a new world(the start of part 3).

Now the interesting part for me was that the production is crystal clear and Mayhempractised a lot since the album is really, really technical. Hellhammer, the drummer did a greatjob on the drums. They are so fast and technical that it´s almost impossible to believe heis human and not a computer. I hear vague infleunces from the Norwegian technical metal bandSpiral Architect in Mayhem´s sound and compositions. Maybe it´s not a huge surprise that Øyvind -Spiral Architect´s vocalist- does some guestvocals on the track "Completion in Scienceof Agony", which is Mayhem´s longest and slowest song ever, but also one of the best tracks onthe album.

The whole album sounds really modern and fresh, they even used a vocoder to give Maniac, the vocalist, a futuristic, robotic voice in parts of the songs. Now Maniacalso does some other new tricks on the album, since on some songs (most of them in part 2)he narrates a lot. It´s like he is telling the listener a story, a great effect if you ask me.Ofcourse he didn´t ditch the black metal screams, there are a lot of them and they sound reallygood and agressive.

I can´t skip talking about one part of the album, namely the track "A bloodsword and a colder Sun",which might surprise a lot of people since it´s Mayhem´s most experimental track up to date.Yes, it´s not metal, no it´s not techno either, like some people tend to believe, but it´s a really smoothtrip-hop song. It´s clearly that Mayhem listened a lot to the English band Massive Attack since you can hear that they were inspired by this band. Still, inspired is not bad and the song fitsthe whole concept of the album perfectly and sounds really good for a metal band doing a trip-hop song.

As a conclusion I can say that not every old Mayhem fan might like this album, as you can read they changeda lot during the years, for me it´s only positive and I´m glad Mayhem went for a new kind of sound insteadof doing what almost every new black metal band on the block does. It´s fresh and Mayhem might starta new musical revolution again with this album. Progressive black metal? Post-black metal? Well, justcheck this album out, whatever style it is, it´s GOOD!