Album Review : Mayhem - Wolf's Lair Abyss (1997)

Most people who know Norwegian black metal icons Mayhem have never listened to their music. The only thing they know about the band is that they used to burn churches, that the bass player killed the guitarist over a money dispute and shady paedophilia claims * and that their frontman killed himself and that his corpse was subsequently featured on the cover of a bootleg album **. They were so crazy, they self-destructed. A lot less people know that Mayhem was reborn from its ashes three years later with an alternate lineup, dishing some of the most violent and tormented black metal ever recorded. WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS was released in 1997, is only 24 minutes long and has very little to do with the lineup that turned Mayhem into an urban legend. It has very little to do with what you might know about music, art and how you  understand life in general.

It's a record that keeps redefining itself and challenging perceptions almost twenty years after its release.

WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS is a 5 songs EP, but I like to think about it as one long epic poem about the end of men. By that, I don't mean that every song sounds the same, but that one is the logical evolution of the other. Both lyrically and musically. Although the lyrics are the highly subjective tales of ancient cosmic forces and wide scale destruction, I believe there is a particular order in how the tale is told: I AM THY LABYRINTH and FALL OF SERAPHS are more conceptual, talk about the divine and the chaos forces of the universe, as ANCIENT SKIN and SYMBOLS OF BLOODSWORD are about violence and destruction. There is a logical progression to the lyrics of WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS, like an ongoing apocalypse. It's capped by the curious and foreshadowing THE VORTEX VOID OF INHUMANITY, which will introduces the musical ideas Mayhem will further explore in their album GRAND DECLARATION OF WAR. 

One of the key elements that makes WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS successful is the vocals of long time frontman Maniac. He's always been a controversial element of the band because of his limitations as a performer. The rebirth of Mayhem was way more technical than its first iterations and purist often voiced their frustration that such a talented an nefarious outfit was fronted by singer that was more of an on-stage performer with two vocal tricks, really : an intense, gravely shriek and a dignified, almost mocking spoken word delivery. In WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS though, his shrieks are right at home inside the furious walls of guitar and blast beat drums. Maniac might just have a couple in his register, but it's exploited to its fullest on this EP. As long as he sings about the end of the world at a furious tempo, he doesn't seem comically out of place.

Maniac had his prime, where he looked right at home fronting Mayhem. This stopped being the case a couple years later, unfortunately.

Not many fans care about the conceptual side of Mayhem as much as I do, though. Their musical mastery (and maybe their folklore, just a little bit) is what earned them their legacy. I'm not a musician myself, but what characterizes WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS and makes it so memorable can be broken down in two things: 1) The unrelenting violence and clarity of vision in the use of guitars. It's not the most textured work, but it creates a sense of urgency and despair like most black metal recordings can only hope to achieve and 2) The quiet, progressive integration of electronic/industrial elements, which enhanced the apocalyptic atmosphere and will eventually inspire emerging bands such as Anaal Nathrakh (a personal favourite) to use them ***. WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS was the first album that I ever remembered to sound like the apocalypse, and it was achieved through clarity of vision, maximizing the sonic potential of traditional rock instruments and the integration of electronic sound. Somebody had finally figured it out.

WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS is one of the album I've listened to integrally the most times in my life. I am well over a hundred uninterrupted spins and I will be over a thousand before I shuffle off my mortal coil. It is such an important record that paved the way for an entirely new way of playing black metal that was developed at the turn of the millenium. WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS is a confluence of everything that was ever good about Mayhem, 24 minutes of perfect, organized musical chaos, an assault on everything you've ever taken for granted. It's an album that evolves with every listen you give it and that take a different, deeper meaning at different parts of your life. It's definitely not something you can outgrow. WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS is a mandatory stop in the evolution of black metal. It was groundbreaking in 1997, but it's a timeless piece of anthology today. I believe it is  the best, most visceral offering in Mayhem's legacy.

Standout Tracks: All of it. It's a short album, but if I had to choose, I Am Thy Labyrinth, Fall of Seraphs and Symbols and Bloodswords.

* The urban legend wants that Euronymous (the murdered party) made the band watch paedophilia tapes not because it aroused him, but because he thought it was something evil people did. This way of thinking is ten different kinds of fucked up itself, but it's never been verified and is nothing more than folkloric hearsay. Makes for a great story though. 

** Very graphic. Think twice about clicking through.

*** The British outfit released their first demo sixteen months after WOLF'S LAIR ABYSS and there happened to be a Mayhem cover on it. Coincidence? I think not.