Mayhem: The Early Years, 1985-1987

The story of MAYHEM is pretty well-documented at this point.  They formed in 1984 in Oslo, Norway, taking their name from the instrumental Venom song, "Mayhem With Mercy".  The founders were guitarist/vocalist Euronymous, bassist Necrobtucher, and drummer Manheim.  Drawing their influence from bands like Venom and Bathory, a lot of their early material was covers.  They produced a very rough, raw demo in 1985 entitled Voice of a Tortured Skull.  It never got an official release and is still considered a bootleg down to this day.

The classic song "Carnage", without vocals, from 1985's Voice of a Tortured Skull

In these early years, Mayhem became known more for their demos than anything else.  Euronymous tended to vocal duties until they landed Maniac on vocals sometime in 1986.  In 1986, they put out the official demo Pure Fucking Armageddon and recorded live tracks that later were put out on the bootleg album The Dawn of the Black Hearts.

"Ghoul", from Pure Fucking Armageddon

In 1986, Maniac (or was it Messiah?) joined on vocals.  In 1987, they put out the Deathrehearsal demo and the very famous EP Deathcrush.  I would say along with Sarcofago's INRI and Bathory's Under the Sign..., Deathcrush was one of the black metal highlights of 1987.  One can really hear a modern black metal sound taking shape on Deathcrush.  The genres were really beginning to differentiate themselves from each other by this time, with thrash and death and black metal all carving out specific niches.

I love this song.  "Deathcrush" is such a classic.

With vile, tortured vocals and the kind of distortion which is still with modern black metal to this day, Mayhem achieved something fairly unique on Deathcrush.  There weren't really a lot of black metal bands that sounded uniquely black metal.  They were, for the most part, black/thrash or black/death or some other blurring of genres.  Mayhem really marked a shift.


After 1987, Mayhem changed quite a bit.  Hellhammer took over on drums, and the infamous Dead took over on vocals.  I will focus on Mayhem during the Dead years at a later date.....

Select Discography:

Voice of a Tortured Skull (demo) (1985)
Pure Fucking Armageddon (demo) (1986)
Deathrehearsal (demo) (1987)
Deathcrush EP (1987)

Next time:  SARCOFAGO