Mayhem keeps its throne.
The legendary Norwegian band, featuring Attila Csihar on vocals, Necrobutcher on bass, Hellhammer on drums as well as Teloch and Ghul on guitars, have become regular live performers across the globe, and offer us the chance to relive the experience they propagated on the Daemon tour in 2022 with Demonic Rites, their new live album.
Divided into three acts, the band’s setlist begins with the musicians’ long-awaited entrance, followed by a track from their latest album, where Attila‘s putrid howls meet a chaotic but excellently mixed instrumental, perfectly conveying the live setting’s strength. Tracks follow one another, leaving the vocalist to explore his vocal skills while the musicians deliver a constantly disquieting rhythm, and the audience’s screams occasionally disturb the black mass, followed by the frontman who sometimes introduces the tracks. Voces Ab Alta will bring this first act to a furious close, leaving the congregation in heavy tones before the band return for four tracks, paying tribute to their flagship album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, starting with the inevitable Freezing Moon and its oppressive atmosphere. As before, the sound is exquisite and in keeping with the viscerality of live performance, offering us coldness or ferocity depending on the track, and it’s after an impressively furious Buried by Time and Dust that the musicians leave us with Silvester Anfang as an interlude. The five demons return for four violent, Old School tracks from their first demos, starting with the devastating Deathcrush, followed after a short break by the equally violent Chainsaw Gutsfuck. Attila thanked his audience before continuing with Carnage, followed by the short Pure Fucking Armageddon, which closed the set.
I was lucky enough to attend a concert on this Mayhem tour, and was extremely satisfied. The bluffing Demonic Rites took me back in time, and I saw myself once again in the middle of that frenzied pit, vibrating to the sound of obscure riffs as if I were there.
90/100