Search - Mayhem :: Chimera

A Crushing Good Trip - Highly Recommended

Snow Leopard | Urbana, IL | 10/22/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The shortest review for this disc would be, "If you thought Mayhem's most recent album, Ordo ad Chao, was awesome, then you may even like this one better." Part of the reason for this is that this one seems more committed (or maybe just harder) than "Ordo ad Chao". Part of the reason also seems to be subtleties in the music that make listening to it, even with headphones, especially rewarding. And while subtlety hardly ever seems to be a word that should be applied to this kind of gruntastic metal, Mayhem (at least ever since their ground-breaking "Grand Declaration of War") have made a virtue of peppering details amidst all the rest of their sludge, grind, and full-on auditory assaults.



Consider the opener, "Whore," at 2'58", which begins with an unamplified guitar chord that's completely unexpected in this kind of music, followed by the usual high-energy, pure guitar assault for several seconds, and then the chord again. There's a devilish sense of humor about this which, again, isn't something one expects from this music, especially from Mayhem. The chord returns a few times, buried in the mix of the ongoing mayhem, and also, of course, to end the song. Meanwhile, the song itself is as straightforward as it gets, with everyone smashing along at warp speed. The tempo is almost exhausting, despite the song being only 3 minutes long, and makes for a very aggressive opening to the album.



"Dark Night of the Soul," at 5'41", starts out at a more relaxed pace, with scattered arpeggios and power chords, before settling into another straightforward, full-band lobectomy. Even so, at 1'40" a buried guitar line weaves its way in the background in a thoroughly melodic way; one of those devilish Mayhem details. The opening of the song returns again, catches with a quick red herring of another riff, and settles into a variation of the opening, much more "standard" sounding, but satisfying for the sheer contrast. Mixed into this is another multi-layered quick little guitar aside that could definitely hang around longer. During the break, it seems as if the buried guitar line of earlier now reappears, sawn out in chords and in the front of the music; it's not really the same line, but it "feels" like it and makes the whole thing come together as a song that one usually doesn't get from this kind of metal. More briefly, this song demonstrates that the Mayhem's songwriting often gets lost in its categorization as black metal.



"Rape Humanity with Pride," at 5'54", starts out with fast, battering chords, and then drops into a rider of the apocalypse canter, into which Maniac gurgles and chokes to death. The whole thing kind of melts away after a minute, becoming something of a death march (the doubled vocals here want headphones), then morphing even more to hammered out guitar chords, guttural vocals, and a cunningly placed heroin-ooze guitar line running over the top like molasses. (This is all in the first 2'30" of the song; lots going on here.) Overall, the whole tendency of this song is to start something, and then start slowing down, becoming heavier and heavier. At 4'30", the bass drops out, with multiple layers of choking vocals swirling around, followed (of course) by the whole thing with full-band workout and culminating with black chorus super-gothic doominess. A quick restatement of the opening closes the song somewhat gratuitously, but in all, another cunningly assembled mess of Mayhem.



"My Death," at 4'13", begins with a slow, power-chord fade in that definitely portends yummy brain surgery to come, but instead breaks out into more straightforward shredding with vicious sounding crisscross vocals. Then comes one of the finer moments on the album--the guitars break into high slow notes while the drums and bass keep the same pace as before, and Maniac's howl goes on forever behind the whole wall of assault. Suddenly the guitars drop, and what seemed like ambient noise becomes an enormous riff that the bass and drums join in with finally. After this momentary grandeur, the piece breaks up into something as messy as the shambling dead, full of guitar lines like comets and vocal chunks sliding through, before the grand theme is slipped back in, much faster, and beating away at the back of your eyes at first, and then in its slower guise to make the piece virtually epic.



"You Must Fall," at 6'59", is one second short of the album's longest song, and literally launches into itself, grinding along with warp-speed notes punctuated by off-accent chords, actually succeeding in out-intensifying the earlier parts of the album. Also, one hardly notices it at first, but the basic sound of the song is varied here; most of the first four songs had a very similar sound, here things are a bit bassier--a variation that is appreciated. At 3'17", the song reprises itself with, incredibly, even more energy--the garage days of Mayhem have given way to serious multitracking, at least here--including, again, more soaring guitar notes floating over the top of the hurricane of music. With its virtually relentless repetition, this piece should become boring but, again, it's the devilish details, variations in licks, brief digressions, changes in guitar tone, and clever overdubs that allow the piece to basically sit on one idea for 7 minutes without changing. At 6'00", some more tracks are added to "fill out" the already demon-brimming fullness of the song, and the simply beats down on its main ideas with astonishing single-minded. This is probably one of the most relentless songs ever committed to disc, and is a serious stand-out on this album.



"Slaughter of Dreams," at 5'38", starts off with a short breather (comparatively speaking) in growly bass and sighing guitars, then stops messing around and lays in with a ripsaw guitar riff. Alternating between these two ideas forms the backbone of the song, with lots of subtle noise-variations hanging off like ribs, or ornaments. Once again, at 2'15", another brief digression slides in to break things up, and then it's back to the opening; similarly, in the last 2 minutes of the song, more musical ideas are hammered out, with a quick restatement of the themes at the end to round everything out. One can only be glad that Blasphemer (the only one credited with music-writing, save for Maniac) has no shortage of ideas and snippets for his songs.



"Impious Devious Leper Lord," at 7'00", is the longest song, and gets the silly title award. The soundscape here is radically different than the rest of the album as well, sounding at first glance like a reference King Diamond's "To the Morgue". Moving through variously aggressive moods, the end is nevertheless effective, with some creepy spoken vocals, and then the howls, "You are not dead. You never existed."



"Chimera," at 6'08", is one of the standout tracks on the album, though it's not immediately apparent why this should be. It's here that the cut-n-paste genius of Blasphemer seems to be operating on all cylinders. The opening guitar lick obviously resembles the previous song, but is intercut with weird guitar accents and clangs on a cymbal, and triplet-feel guitar fills. This all vanishes, leaving Maniac to gutturally growl maniacally, as the music starts and stops around him in off-kilter rhythms and non-melodic progressions, all building up a climax of screaming that breaks off just as quickly as it begins. One hardly wants to resort to undead metaphors, but this sounds like the musical equivalent of the impious devious leper lord of the previous song. At 2'15" yet another brilliant, nasty, visceral saw-fest knifes its way through Maniac's extended howl, before staggering around and reprising the opening "theme" again. One can really feel how unhinged, how clawing the song is as it staggers around, tearing pieces of ideas into itself. Then, with one crushing chord, at 3'30" the piece finds something it can sink its teeth into; details again, the guitar dives here are especially cool, and add to the death-shamble of the song in a yummy and grotesque way. Over all of this, suspend vocals that seem to be oblivious to the music, an apparently China-boy cymbal crash that turns into a how from Maniac, and then generally such a piling on of guitar tracks and triplet guitar accents that one just gets lost in it. A quick little finger flip ends the song and the album on an abrupt, and starting note.



From start to finish, a very committed, cunning, and above all, musically-created album of nearly pure sonic viciousness. Compared to Dimmu Borgir, Mayhem still sound like a garage band, but compared to their earlier discs, and many other Scandinavian metal bands that still make a virtue of sounding like they recorded their albums in a bucket, the sound here is rich, satisfying, and carries the weight of what Mayhem seem to be wanting to accomplish. Highly recommended.

"

The true Mayhem

Joshua K. Meyers | Elkton, MD United States | 09/20/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After all the darkness and malevolence (musical and otherwise) spawned by this band throughout its career, it would all amalgamate on their 2004 released, soul crushing album Chimera.



Gone are the experimental avenues explored on the previous "Grand Declaration..." record, in favor of an utterly brutal and aggressive sound that extrapolates from their earlier haunting, razor intensity (which became their calling card sonically) and combines it with a ferocious technicality, death metal/thrash-like heaviness, and refined production never witnessed before. Their primal spirit, finely articulated with laser focus and precision, helps to create an incredible statement and possibly their best album.



Every individual member shines through on this recording. Vocalist Maniac's use of his classic raspy, shrieking black metal vocal style (as well as occasional whispers and chants) along with nihilistic lyrics harken back to the Mayhem of old, indeed when he was a part of the band some 15 years before this recording. Necrobutcher's haunting and quite heavy bass lines are allowed to breathe through due to the improved production, even coming to the fore in spots during breaks. Hellhammer, after years of fine tuning and improving his craft through other bands such as Winds and Arcturus, showcases the full extent of his ability here that makes for a career defining moment, outdoing anything he's done before.



But perhaps the one most deserving of accolades on this recording is guitarist Blasphemer. At this point in his career, after several years of hard work, the talk of replacing Euronymous and such should be ancient history, yet it still persisted. What he needed was a masterpiece, forged with all the brutally and maturity he was capable of. I believe this record was his attempt at making one.



Upon first listen, one will notice the abundance of guitar parts and layers across the stereo field. The crisp production was needed to create this soundscape so it wouldn't sound like a mudslide caught in a tornado. The guitar is utilized extensively, with hard riffs, high speed picking, dissonant leads, prolonged notes, and sound effects. His focused and well-wrought songwriting, combined with attention to detail, certainly makes this his creative crown jewel; there really isn't a weak track to be found here, and all of it sounds cohesive and superb, no matter how loud you turn it up (which I've explored numerous times).



Track highlights include 'Rape Humanity with Pride,' which faithfully lives up to its namesake by testing the band and its listeners with a storm of such high speed intensity and darkness that its certain to please even the most ardent metalheads. 'Slaughter of Dreams' unleashes a groove and a riff that chugs like a freight train from hell. Opener '[...]' is a short and quick overture for the whole record, accentuated with a break midsong by Maniac screaming the title. And 'Dark Night of the Soul' breaks during moments to allow the vocals and bass to take over.



Despite the highlights, this is an album that can keep the listener's attention throughout the whole duration, as each track possesses a life of its own.



Anyone who became disillusioned after "Grand Declaration of War" or simply didn't give the band a chance after Euronymous' death would do well to check this album out - its Mayhem at its strongest and most mature. Likewise, any metal fan in general looking to experience what one of the most notorious and influential bands in metal history is all about should give it a listen."