Review Summary: Mayhem stay in their lane
Full video review - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5p0IWzeOKA&t
Mayhem are
the blueprint for Scandinavian black metal. Whether you love them, fear them, or just enjoy judging them from a safe distance, they’re one of the most influential metal bands ever. Their debut full length
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas alone shaped an entire genre — and an entire generation of metalheads who now own too much corpse paint and too many candles.
Fast-forward through the chaotic early years, the controversies, the lineup changes, the reinventions, the re-reinventions… and we land in 2026, where Mayhem are undoubtedly legacy figures in extreme music. And that’s an important word here:
legacy. Because
Liturgy of Death arrives in a world where dozens of bands are playing the very sound Mayhem helped innovate — but often with more ferocity, more experimentation, and more youthful chaos. So this album feels like a veteran band showing they can still play fast, still sound menacing, and still pull off blast beats that would give most people carpel tunnel. But is also feels like an album Mayhem could fart out in their sleep.
Let’s start with the obvious: the album is technically very proficient. No one here forgot how to play their instruments. Mayhem remain very tight — maybe too tight for a band whose roots were all about chaos and that youthful energy that was kinda punk and kinda sloppy. Hellhammer’s drumming is still ridiculous - for a man who’s in his mid-50s, his stamina is incredible. The downside is it gets very samey. There’s a 'full-steam-ahead' monotony to the percussion that flattens some of the drama. The guitars are towering and spiraling, non-stop minor chords and dissonance. Tracks like
“Propitious Death” bring some badass jagged riffing and even some cool, slightly more varied drum fills. Meanwhile
“Funeral of Existence” taps into some classic
De Mysteriis-style tremolo picking. The vocals? Still monstrous, still demonic. Atilla remains a pretty badass frontman and he shows his full range of wares, from his big operatic shouts like he’s giving a sermon at satanic church, or his zombie monster snarls. But while some bands feel like they are more than the sum of their parts, here this feels like the opposite. It should be more exciting that it is based on the individual talents of the band.
The first half of the album is a real slog.
“Weep for Nothing” and
“Despair” both drag and overstay their welcome. The second half of the record does bring some more twists and turns.
"Realm of Endless Misery” features a short but muscular bass solo which provides some breathing room from the wall of noise.
“Propitious Death” as I mention has some sick riffs and the more varied drumming. And the closer,
“The Sentence of Absolution” is surprisingly cinematic. A slow buildup, a sense of surveying the scorched earth behind you, followed by frantic, helter-skelter riffing — one of the few tracks with personality and atmosphere. Honestly, if the whole record hit as hard as those final few tracks, I could see giving this a great score.
Liturgy of Death is a solid, proficient, fast, well-made black metal album from OGs. But it’s also unsurprising, predictable, and a bit samey. The production is too clean for its own good: Mayhem sound good, but they no longer sound
important. A respectable late-career record, but definitely one for the dedicated fanbase rather than a standout record for 2026 metal.
