MayHem
Grand Declaration Of War

THE REVIEW

Gran Declaration Of War (Mayhem)
What is it?... an experimental album by Mayhem, hated by most of their fans, why?...

Personally, I consider it the ultimate outburst of the prowess of Mayhem themselves in playing and inventing new sounds. You can immediately tell the vast array of techniques possessed by HellHammer (the band's drummer) when he plays simple pieces on the electronic drums and then shifts to the usual "tupà tupà"... or the exceptional voice of Maniac, who manages to blend clean, scream, and "sensual" whispers in the record.

You can also perceive the electronic experimentation present in the second part of the record with keyboards and "robotic" voices, truly amazing. The album talks about a hypothetical war between Christians and pagans, a war that, as understood from the LP's tracks, will never end; in fact, you can clearly hear that in the first part of the record (from the first to the 5th track) there are heavily distorted guitars and fast sounds, typical of black metal... then the fateful bomb explodes, followed by a deadly whistle (a genius move by Mayhem, I must say)... from that moment, the great Maniac starts with his whispers and HellHammer with the electronic drums, a post-war scenario perfectly represented.

Unforgettable and ingenious are tracks 11 and 12: as for the first, it starts with the phrase "I Remember The Future... A New Beginning Of Time" and leaves us with about 5 minutes of silence, almost inviting us to reflect on this wonderful phrase. The 12th track... what can I say... 7 seconds of pure silence, we ask ourselves... why 7 seconds? well, I don't know either.

End of the album: track 13, the guitars resume the melody of the first songs, as if to say that this war will never end, and evidently, it is so. A big thanks to Mayhem for these masterpieces, my rating for the album is a nice 5 out of 5. Congratulations once again, you hit the mark!!