Uruk_Hai
Review #1
I avoided Metal music for many years because I always thought it was just weird vocal noises, unstoppable drums and weird distorted guitar riffs, I didn't know what the different types of Metal are and the only metal artists that I used to listen to (very scarcely) were the ones that were someway related to Progressive Rock (Tool, Dream Theater, Opeth, Devin Townsend and Agalloch to name a few).
Sometimes I get tired of Progressive Rock and that's where I start to discover different kinds of Bands and musical genres, so, about a year ago I discovered a Black Metal playlist on Spotify and I listened to it merely for curiosity, now I regret for all the time I wasted: I found out a lot of excellent Black Metal recordings from the 90's but it was particularly "De Mysteriis dom Sathanas" by Mayhem the one that really captured my attention. Further than the whole suicide, murdering and burning churches crap that the members of this chaotic band were involved in, the music on this album was something absolutely different to anything that I've ever heard.
I've been listening to several (well, maybe not several but various) Black Metal bands lately and it's easy to know what the music is about: weird vocal noises, unstoppable drums and weird distorted guitar riffs, the exact same stuff that I always avoided Metal Music for is what made me get really interested in it, but after getting some info about Mayhem I can get that this was (and still is) one of the most iconic and representative bands of the whole Norwegian Black Metal scene and they were actually pioneers on the style: even when their album was released until 1994 when both Dead and Euronymous were already death, the band was extremely popular in the underwolrd of Norway since the late eighties.
Even when Mayhem is not the only Black Metal band and it is probably not the best one, the most prolific or the most popular one, its relevance and influence in the development of this particular musical style is undeniable. As I said before: this album was released after Dead and Euronymous deaths so this is not only a debut album: it is a very important historical archive that should be recognized as one of those pillar albums in the creation of a whole new style of music.
I hope to keep discovering more and more albums like this in the journey that I'm starting through the universe of Black Metal, from now on, I have a lot of research to do, but I couldn't choose a better record to start.