''Esoteric Warfare'' is the fifth full-length studio album by Norwegian
black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, a shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, raw (lo-fi) recording, unconventional song structures, and an emp ...
band
Mayhem. It was released by
Season of Mist on 6 June 2014 in Europe and Asia, and on 10 June 2014 in North America. It is the band's first album with Teloch on guitar since
Blasphemer's departure from the band in 2008.
Background
The album was initially announced in a 2012 interview with the bass guitarist
Necrobutcher with
Blabbermouth.net
Blabbermouth.net is a website dedicated to heavy metal and hard rock news, as well as album and music DVD reviews. Blabbermouth.net was founded and is run by Borivoj Krgin. The first version of the website was launched in March 2001; in Octob ...
. On 2 August 2013, the drummer
Hellhammer
Hellhammer was a Swiss metal band from Nürensdorf, active from 1982 to 1984. Although the band's sound and style were heavily criticized and poorly reviewed during their active years, they have been widely praised in retrospect and are often r ...
announced on Mayhem's official
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
page that he was then recording his drum parts for the album. Mayhem announced in November 2013 that the album had entered the
mixing process and that they expected to release it in early 2014. On 18 February 2014, it was announced that a teaser
7" single
In music, a single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record or an album. One can be released for sale to the public in a variety of formats. In most cases, a single is a song that is released separat ...
containing the track "Psywar" would be released on 25 April 2014. On 19 February 2014, Mayhem's record label,
Season of Mist, announced that the new album's title would be ''Esoteric Warfare'' and its release date was to be 6 June 2014. On 19 March 2014, Blabbermouth.net unveiled the album's official track listing along with other details.
Writing and recording
The album was recorded and mixed between September and October in 2013. While the drums were recorded in Mølla Studio, the rest of the album was recorded in SleikBallaMi in Oslo. After recording was finished, the band returned to Mølla Studio where mixing was handled by Knut Møllarn from
Arcturus
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Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Boötes. With an apparent visual magnitude of −0.05, it is the third-brightest of the ...
. The album was mastered by Maor Applebaum in the US. Much of the album was written by new guitarist Teloch, while the lyrics were handled by vocalist Attila and Cern Abyss. He said that "my problem with this album was to write an album that would be fitting to release after 'Ordo ad Chao.' First, I wrote almost a whole album, but it was too much back to the roots, and try to top 'Ordo' for me as a songwriter was not a option either--that would be suicide for me as songwriter for them." The band actually recorded many of the aforementioned songs, but they were scrapped as Teloch was ultimately not satisfied with them, and the band started over.
According to Attila, the band wanted to make an album that "sounded like Mayhem." He said that "After the ''
Ordo
''Ordo'' (Latin "order, rank, class") may refer to:
* A musical phrase constructed from one or more statements of a rhythmic mode pattern and ending in a rest
* Big O notation in calculation of algorithm computational complexity
* Orda (organizati ...
'' album, which was a little bit progressive—maybe a little bit too much—almost like a fusion album where riffs were not repeated and the rhythm was always out or different or kind of twisted, we wanted to go back from there instead of going forward in that direction. Every Mayhem album has a kind of unique aspect, but we wanted to go back to a little bit more traditional extreme metal. Of course, there’s all these elements that Mayhem has built up for itself as a band, but we still wanted to go back to something that was straightforward musically and a little more brutal and more like extreme metal."
As with the previous album, the lyrics focus less on the classically Satanic themes of the band's early work, instead referring to occult and
conspiracy theory concepts such as psychic powers, mind control and alien tampering with human evolution. (For instance, the song "Corpse of Care" appears to be a direct allusion to
Bohemian Grove
Bohemian Grove is a restricted 2,700-acre (1,100 ha) campground at 20601 Bohemian Avenue, in Monte Rio, California, United States, belonging to a private San Francisco–based gentlemen's club known as the Bohemian Club. In mid-July each year, ...
and the Cremation of Care ceremony performed there.)
"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." by
J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is oft ...
serves as the intro for the song ''Trinity'' which is also the code name assigned by Oppenheimer for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon.
[ ''Trinity Nuclear Test'']
Like its predecessor
Ordo Ad Chao, the album has some death metal sound and death grunt vocals. The album style has more
blackened death metal
Blackened death metal (also known as black death metal) is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal that fuses elements of black metal and death metal.
The genre emerged in early 1990s when black metal bands began incorporating elements of death me ...
sound than any of its predecessors.
Critical reception
Upon its release, ''Esoteric Warfare'' received positive reviews from music critics. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 69, which indicates "generally favorable reviews", based on 4 reviews.
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to ...
wrote: "After 30 years, ''Esoteric Warfare'' is a Mayhem album worth talking about more for its sounds than its associated baggage."
Sputnikmusic staff writer Voivod thought: "Despite being derivative, ''Esoteric Warfare'' is worthy of praise, because it keeps alive a sound practised by merely a handful of outfits, some of them sadly disbanded."
Nevertheless, Alex Franquelli of
PopMatters
''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, fi ...
was more mixed in his assessment of the album, stating: "Mayhem are clearly trying to push the envelope of their metal, but their efforts are rendered vain by the lack of derring-do which has sealed the fate of other fellow second-wave black metallers."
Track listing
LP and CD Collector's Box bonus track
Japanese Edition bonus track
Personnel
;Mayhem
*
Attila — vocals, lyrics,
producer
*
Necrobutcher — bass guitar
*
Hellhammer
Hellhammer was a Swiss metal band from Nürensdorf, active from 1982 to 1984. Although the band's sound and style were heavily criticized and poorly reviewed during their active years, they have been widely praised in retrospect and are often r ...
— drums
*
Teloch
Morten Bergeton Iversen (born 19 November 1974), better known by his stage name Teloch ( ), is a Norwegian black metal musician known for being a live guitarist for Gorgoroth, God Seed and 1349. He is currently the guitarist for Mayhem.
Ca ...
— guitar, music, producer,
recording engineer
*
Ghul
A ghoul ( ar, غول, ') is a demon-like being or monstrous humanoid. The concept originated in pre-Islamic Arabian religion, associated with graveyards and the consumption of human flesh. Modern fiction often uses the term to label a cert ...
— guitar
;Additional personnel
* Christian Fleck (aka CERN) — lyrics
* Zbigniew Bielak — cover art
* Maor Appelbaum — Mastering Engineer
*
Mollarn — recording engineer,
mixing
* Ester Segarra —
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employe ...
Chart performance
Weekly charts
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Esoteric Warfare
2014 albums
Mayhem (band) albums
Season of Mist albums