MAYHEM — Grand Declaration of War (review)

MAYHEM — Grand Declaration of War album cover

Album · 2000 · Black Metal

2.5/5 · 2012-02-21
Warthur

Wolf's Lair Abyss managed to combine the aggression and fury of classic Mayhem with a new level of technical accomplishment in the performances, giving fans hope that the first full-length studio album from the post-Euronymous lineup would be a real classic.

It's no surprise, then, that it got such a negative reaction - coming across more as a highly experimental piece reminiscent of what would happen if you crossed a marching band with Arcturus. But even if you're open to the idea of technical Arcturan marching metal, I can't help but think the implementation of the idea here leaves something to be desired. The album sounds, cold, disjointed and alienating, and whilst perhaps that is precisely the effect the band was aiming for it still means that the album is hard to get into - and once you've got into it, you may find that it's not worth the effort compared to richer and more accomplished efforts at technical black metal. On the whole, it's an experiment which was worth trying but didn't work out so well in practice.

UPDATE: OK, the situation surrounding this album has now become substantially more complicated with the release of a remixed version in 2018, with updated cover art. (The old version has a photo of a dove caught on barbed wire, the remix has an illustration of Christ holding the dove.)

As I mentioned above, the production job on this album was deliberately cold and alienating, which accounts for its love-it-or-hate-it status: some listeners dig the experiment Mayhem are undertaking here, others find it so alienating as to be not worth the effort to engage with. The new mix seems to be intended for those of us who didn't enjoy it first time around, teasing out aspects of the musicianship (especially in terms of the rhythm section) which the old production had obscured and generally making everything sound much better to my ears.

It's been argued by some that this misses the point of the original work, and I can certainly see their point, but on the other hand I wouldn't say that the new mix robs the music of its colder, inhuman nature - it just applies it with much more subtlety. Whereas the old production job laid on this aspect of the music with a sledgehammer, this new one is a scalpel; whereas the old production in some respects is a bit dated (being rather inspired by what some industrial acts were doing at the time), the new production feels fresher.

Most importantly, whilst the rawer sound makes the album more accessible to those used to Mayhem's usual black metal style, at the same time the new mix teases out how the compositions and performances here, more technical than typical for Mayhem, teased out and supported the intended atmosphere themselves. That coldness which I keep talking about wasn't just inherent to the mixing job on the previous version - it was an artistic choice which informed the compositional process and the band's performance, and this new production job brings out those aspects admirably.

In short, if this remix makes the album more accessible, it's a trap - luring unwary listeners in only to ambush them with the same cyberpunk posthuman absolute zero chill that the previous mix put front and centre. Odds are there'll be one mix of this album you'll enjoy substantially more than the other mix; for my part, I'll give it two and a half stars, when really it's two stars for the old mix, three for the new.