Style: Black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Like seeing a surgery go horribly wrong behind a partially obscured screen, you know things are bad but can't make out the details.
Thoughts: Mayhem. A name that is steeped in controversy and history. Perhaps the most storied band in the entire black metal genre. Certainly the most well known... at least for what happened in the early 90's more so than anything else.
But that was then, and this is 2007. Atilla has since left and come back into the band, and we now have his first offering since the infamous debut. I'll be honest, on De Mysteries Atilla's vocals ruin the album for me. His whispered semi creepy/cringy tone don't fit the music at all. I would have highly prefered Dead or Maniac at that point in time be the vocalist, as their renditions of the songs are much more powerful.
In the time he spent away from the band Atilla was in Aborym, an industrial black metal band. In the albums that I heard his vocals had greatly improved. He employs a great many styles, including a more typical black metal shriek, his trademark croon, and some very unsettling whispers. These all carried over to Mayhem.
Ordo ad Chao is an obscure album. Not just in the way that the music is created by the way that the album is produced as well. Everything sounds like it's underwater. You can hear what is going on but only with quite a bit of effort.
Once the initial veil of the album in penetrated there is a lot to dig into. The riffs are unlike typical black metal... they weave and twist into uncomfortable shapes and sounds. Hellhammer's drums match their strangeness beat for beat and Atilla's vocals are in perfect allegiance with the rest of the band.
Mayhem have always been an evolving band. To this point they had never once done a repeat of a previous sound. Ordo ad Chao shows a band that has evolved beyond the chains that were set by the debut album and founding member. This is now a band that has become something more... not just Mayhem... but finally The True Mayhem.
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