THE DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR 2025

Preeminent black metallers Mayhem ready their newest live strike with Daemonic Rites for Century Media. The 16-track effort captures the frightful efficiency and utter lethality of the Norwegians as they close the chapter on their exalted sixth album, Daemon (2019). Throughout Daemonic Rites, Mayhem impressively nail newer tracks like “Falsified and Hated,” “Malum,” “Bad Blood,” and “Voces Ab Alta” to the proverbial cross, while offering pure fucking mastery of classics like “Freezing Moon,” “Buried by Time and Dust,” “Deathcrush,” and “Carnage.” The devilish quintet also add mid-career haunts like “To Daimonion,” “Symbols of Bloodswords,” and “My Death,” making Daemonic Rites a genuine career-spanning offering.

“We wanted to document how great the band and set sounds like after almost 40 years of playing live,” says founding member Necrobutcher. “As a treat to our fans, we decided to release this live recording.”

“We released the live version of De Mysteriis [aka De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive] a few years ago,” Ghul adds. “That was received very well. We have been playing together for so long now with this lineup that we feel we have reached a point where we are a seriously well-oiled machine. It seemed like a natural step to try to capture this moment in the band’s history, with the same setlist we have been using for a while.”

Mayhem have nearly 1,000 shows to their name. Since their formation in Langhus, Norway in 1984, the band—now comprised of Necrobutcher (bass), Hellhammer (drums), Attila Csihar (vocals), Teloch (guitars), and Ghul (guitars)—have brought their brand of bellicose, preternatural black metal to over 60 countries. From the United States and Germany to Australia and Brazil, Mayhem have stunned, bewildered, and turned rabid a global legion, dedicated as much to the band’s infamous legacy as they are staunchly in support of Daemon. Much of that respect and devotion started in the early ‘90s, but persisted to the present day on the strength of official live albums Live in Leipzig (1993), Mediolanum Capta Est (1999), Live in Marseille 2000 (2001) and De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive (2016). Mayhem continue their on-stage assault with Daemonic Rites.

“I knew from day one back in 1984 that this band was going to be outstanding—one of the best bands ever!” Necrobutcher says. “I guess that’s a big reason why we still are here after 39 years—and counting.”

“Well, for the first time in a long time, we felt again like a unit, musically,” continues Hellhammer. “That’s something we haven’t felt in a long time, and that shows in the live recording.”

Daemonic Rites wasn’t pre-planned. Rather, they had sound engineer/producer Tore Stjerna (of Necromorbus Studio fame) record everything—just for posterity, in fact—during the group’s Northern Ritual MMXXII and Thalassic Ritual tours of 2022 and early 2023. Mayhem and Stjerna pilfered the gems, resulting in gigs from London (“Life Eternal,” “Malum”), Manchester (“My Death,” “Silvester Anfang”), and Gothenburg (“Pure Fucking Armageddon,” “To Daimonion”) coming out on top. The penultimate Mayhem live album wouldn’t be complete without “Freezing Moon” and “Pagan Fears”—both from Csihar’s hometown of Budapest, Hungary—as well as newer tracks “Falsified and Hated” and “Bad Blood” from Sydney and Melbourne, respectively. Daemonic Rites showcases the two-time Norwegian Grammy (aka Spellemannprisen) winners at the pinnacle of their live potential.

“We play the songs that feel the best live,” Hellhammer says. “We have in the past tried out a lot of different songs from former eras, but when you play live for an audience, the songs must have IT. If they don’t, even if they are good songs, they won’t fit in a live setting.”

Adds Teloch: “We have a vast catalog by now with so many different types of songs. It’s interesting to make them all work together in a full concert.”

Daemonic Rites comes off the heels of Mayhem’s incredible Beyond the Gates 2022 performance, where they uncaged cult classic De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas where it was originally recorded by Eirik ‘Pytten’ Hundvin (Enslaved, Emperor, Immortal) in Grieghallen during 1992/1993. The live album, however, was mixed and mastered over in neighboring Sweden. Stjerna, who also produced Daemon, took the phantasmagoric collection of tracks to his lair at Necromorbus Studio, where his sole job was to preserve Mayhem’s raw, unbridled energy and ghastly electricity. From “Falsified and Hated” and “My Death” to “Buried by Time and Dust” and “Carnage,” they’ve never had the quality of a live album quite like Daemonic Rites. If the past is always alive, this is a live album on par with Venom’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Emperor’s Emperial Live Ceremony, and Gorgoroth’s Black Mass Krakow 2004.

“It fits with where we are now, or more precisely, where we were at the time of the recording,” says Hellhammer.

“[The live recordings] capture the spirit and energy,” furthers Ghul, “of where we are as a band right now.”

Indeed, Mayhem have been and continue to be an unstoppable force. While atavists will always relish the Deathcrush or Live in Leipzig lineups, Hellhammer’s drum performance against the twin terrors of Teloch and Ghul is the purest black magic on Daemonic Rites. Similarly, Csihar’s hair-raising caterwauling and spectral snarls atop Necrobutcher’s seventh-hell low end is witching-hour great! To support Daemonic Rites, Mayhem have videos for Daemon-era masterpiece “Malum” and late-‘80s Killjoy dedication “Chainsaw Gutsfuck” lined up. Daemonic Rites is the perfect guillotine while the group craft new songs and conspire with others on what the group’s 40^th Anniversary next year might entail. Mayhem are likely in their final form, and they’ve never been deadlier.

After Mortiis left Emperor, the Norwegian black metal band he was part of starting, in late 1992, he started Mortiis as a solo project, and released several solo records between 1993 and 1999.

Reinvented as a proper band, Mortiis released The Smell of Rain in 2001. Followed by The Grudge in 2004, and the remix record Some Kind of Heroin in 2006.

Disenfranchised with the brutality and hypocrisy of the record industry, Mortiis did not release a new album untill 2010, when the band self-released the album ”Perfectly Defect” – as a limited edition CD, and as a free download through their own website.

The next record, The Great Deceiver, was completed around 2013, but did not see the light of day, until 2016 due mostly to events beyond the band´s control. Mortiis´ personal mental health being one of them.

The Great Deceiver was finally released in March 2016.

In the fall of 2016 work started on remixing The Great Deceiver. The result was “The Great Corrupter” and features over 20 reworks/remixes of material from The Great Deceiver, by artists as diverse as Godflesh, Die Krupps. In Slaughter Natives, Godflesh, Chris Vrenna, John Fryer, Prurient, Apoptygma Berzerk, PIG, and many more. Release date has been set to April 21st 2017.

Mortiis has toured consistently for the past 15 years, and has shared the stage with a variety of artists and bands spanning genres ranging from black metal, to punk to industrial and EBM. Some of the bands Mortiis has toured with are Danzig, Behemoth, Apoptygma Berzerk, Combichrist, Christian Death, The Genitorturers, Deathstars, etc.

Mortiis has recently made a "return" to the Era 1 style of music, and starting in November with the "Cold Meat Industry" and "Messe des Morts" festivals, will perform a solo "2017 reinterpretation" of the 1994 album "Ånden som Gjorde Opprør".

“I don’t just want to do the record as it was back in 1994, but rather excavate it from 1994 and drag it into the new light of the current world, while retaining the atmosphere of the original sound,” said Mortiis. 

Imperial Triumphant is a metal band that embodies the dissonant duality of life in New York City, from its gilded towers of luxury and sparkling promise of success to its rotten, greedy, rat-infested underbelly. Formed in 2012 by vocalist/guitarist Zachary Ezrin and later joined by bassist Steve Blanco and drummer Kenny Grohowski, the band takes an avant garde, jazz-inspired approach to death/black metal – a deeply unique and confrontational sound made made even more menacing by the malevolent gold masks of the ancient gods Apollo, Baal, and Hecate worn onstage by the three members. In pushing the boundaries of both extreme metal and jazz, they have collaborated with musicians like Trey Spruance (Mr. Bungle), Tomas Haake (Meshuggah), Denis "Snake" Bélanger (Voivod), Alex Skolnick (Testament), and legendary saxophonist Kenny G. The band has brought their frenetic sound to countless festivals all over the world, including multiple performances at Roadburn, Hellfest’s mainstage, Brutal Assault Festival, and Damnation Festival’s “Cult Never Dies” stage as well as tours with Behemoth, Zeal & Ardor, and Immolation. They have performed on stages in hundreds of cities across the globe.

It’s been 7 years since New Skeletal Faces arrived on our planet and embedded themselves in the seedy outlying corners of the Southern Californian music scene. Formed in 2017 New Skeletal Faces present themselves as a cosmic abomination that tote the genre lines between all manners of darkness in music. With an aesthetic as sketchy as their sound, NSF cast the black light onto the long dormant corpse of Deathrock, shattering the mirror of modern Heavy Metal into fragments that reflect back a fresh new take on a sound that time was never told to forget. It’s been with us all along, this darkness… the world can now pretend it always knew.

Their Peaceville debut “Until The Night” further pushes towards the darkest crevices imaginable. Recorded in the shadowy recesses of Hollywood, California, “Until The Night” was tracked, mixed and mastered by legendary producer/engineer Bill Metoyer (Slayer, Wasp, DRI) and has a sound authentic to dark periods of the past bringing you 7 new haunted tracks as well as a reimagined take on Bathory’s “Raise The Dead”. Of recording “Until The Night” Bill said “It was a pleasure working with New Skeletal Faces. A band who not only chose to NOT follow recent songwriting trends of so many other newer metal bands seem to do nowadays, but also the trends in the SOUND of their record. They prefer to sound more old school metal than like most newer metal bands seem to lean towards as of late.” 

“Until The Night” expands upon their 2019 debut album “Celestial Disease” which showcases their deformed interpretation of what Goth, Deathrock and Metal could have been had such a marriage ever been consecrated.  While mostly relegated to the West Coast of the United States. Their live shows have been the main source of light that attracts all the human insects who come in contact. Their live performance showcases their wild and untamed personalities and tend to be infectious, finding the band gaining more and more steam with each transmission. 

New Skeletal Faces are like listening to the 1980s Sunset Strip in an alternate universe from hell. In November 2024 experience “Until The Night” and witness for yourselves the re-genesis of Southern Californian Metal and Deathrock!