Mayhem

De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

Sick torrent of breakneck-speed misery

Review Score:

(10/10)
This album rushes at you like a thousand winged demons flying through a blackened subterranean tunnel; bursts of flame spouting through fissures in the cavern walls. Euronymous's guitar work is sick sick SICK, pioneering the atmospheric blur that was to be the chief defining characteristic of the second wave of black metal. His savage attack hurls forward like the river of blood in "The Shining", with countless intricate riffs bobbing to the surface before being swept back up in the current. Hellhamer's drumming both defines the forward trajectory of the music and accents the breakers in Euro's waves of controlled chaos. Again, this is an early instance of what was to become an important black metal convention: drum accents that barely contain the ugly noise clawing it's way through the darkness. This hyperactive insanity is topped off by the inhuman moaning of vocalist Attila. His much-ridiculed contribution actually works very well in the context of this bewildering music. The guy sounds like a maniac bursting into the dark woods after decades of confinement in an insane asylum, bellowing his bizarre internal opera to the indifferent silence of a moonlit winter's night. He is simultaneously cognizant of, and oblivious to, the winged creatures pouring from the valley behind him.

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