MAYHEM Vinilo y CD

Review: No doubt in response to the international success of 'Lords of Chaos', the dramatisation of their church burning, knife and gun wielding early days, the past decade has seen a major increase in activity for Norwegian black metal pioneers Mayhem, who between celebrating the anniversary of their iconic debut full-length De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas with an anniversary tour and accompanying live album, as well as releasing their venomous sixth LP with 2019's Daemon, have seemingly refused to get off the road. Hence, fans have now been invited to absorb a dense, dank earful of their latest tour in the form of another live collection: Daemonic Rites. Featuring a condensed retrospective setlist that crawls from their later material back to the 90s, offers worship to their debut, before sonically regressing further to their 1987 Deathcrush EP for much more brutal and refined revisions of their early blackened punk output; the setlist offers a career-spanning highlight reel, delivered with all of the poise, power, unsettling malevolence and artistic finesse we've come to expect from the extreme metal old gods.