Mayhem
The Return
[December Creations]


MAYHEM is probably the band which has had the most numerous bootlegs in the history of Black Metal ! Countless tapes, vinyls, CDs... Some of them are famous as they have been widely distributed ("The dawn of the Black Herats", "Ha-Elm-Zalag", "Born into evil" etc. etc.) and some of them present really interesting recordings ("From the dark past", "In memorium"...). But this one seems not to belong to any of these categories ! First it was not really well distributed, at least for the CD edition, which is quite a bad thing as the presentation is really uncommon and interesting for a bootleg (a kind of digipak with nice artwork). But the music on the CD has absolutely no interest ! It features the first live gig played by "The new MAYHEM", in Bischofswerda, eastern germany, on the 21st of June, anno 1997. But the sound quality is pretty horrible, especially for the drum parts, which are almost impossible to hear. I don't know if the guy who recorded this asked tips to the one who made IMMORTAL's "Live Zaandam", but they must have used the same 25-year old shitty tape recorder, for sure ! In addition to this, this gig was, at the same time, available on an official video tape through Misanthopy records. Well, now this video is sold-out but at the time this bootleg was created the video was available everywhere ! And no need to precise the sound on that video was much better than on this CD (although it was already poor on the video !). And in addition to this, "The new MAYHEM" deserves in my sense no attention as MAYHEM without Dead and Euronymous is not MAYHEM, but a joke band. So unless you like hearing Maniac, Hellhammer, Necrobutcher and the new guitarist destroy the dark atmosphere of the old MAYHEM songs, I can't advise you to buy this CD ! Next time, guys, release some MAYHEM stuff from the period when when the band was still called "The True" and not "The new"...

2 / 10


© 2003 lord pesten