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At times, the front-man came close to bleeding to death. The deepest cuts came at gigs that went down extremely well, when the chemistry between Blasphemer, the audience and me was perfect. All those times I cut myself it was completely spontaneous. Gradually, the audience started to expect blood dripping gigs, and when we realised that the cutting had become a phenomenon people came to watch I quit doing it.
We were also told that all Norwegian black-metallers lived in caves in the forest! After all we were Fenriz and Maniac!
On another occasion, an Australian woman came back-stage and insisted on holding my arms and feel the scars left by the knife cuts. She wanted to absorb my aura and take on the vibes that was supposed to surround me. In my world, being a groupie is just about the most pathetic there is so I had one of the bouncers throw her out of the venue we were in. Back home, the press has always managed to dig up some old and gross stories.
When a deranged guy from some crap band was caught molesting a corpse, the newspapers thought it was a great idea to call us for comments because the guy had been pictured wearing a Mayhem shirt at a party years earlier. That says a thing or two about the level of reporting in Norwegian media. This idiot attitude was also one of the reasons why we at one point refused national dailies VG and Dagbladet access to one of our gigs at defunct Oslo club Mars — if they were to see the gig they had to buy tickets as everybody else did.
Could it happen? It's not planned at all but it almost happened. Mayhem did a concert in Oslo where they invited many former members like Maniac or Mannheim. It couldn't happen with Blasphemer. There are still a lot of broken bridges between him and Necrobutcher, him and Hellhammer. Never say never, I think it could happen someday. Similarly, I did not think they would play with Maniac again but they did last year for this concert in Oslo and for another one in Sweden.
I think Attila already had commitments with Sunn o. For the first time he could not do it so they took Maniac and he was very good both times. But I would say that for now, Mayhem are working on their next album and Blasphemer is working on Vltimas , which I think will take off well.
They do not need it. If one day, they need it, maybe it will happen but it is not the case for now. You previously stated that Season of Mist releases a remixed and remastered version of Grand Declaration of War. Who got the idea first?
I did. Because the engineer did not want to do it, same for Hellhammer and Necrobutcher. Again I pushed all the pieces a bit, because it's a long-term job with them. I searched and found the masters, we had them "cooked", a restoration process for analog tapes. There are firms specialized in this for masters of classical music from the sixties. Basically there's a problem with the glue, which deteriorates the magnetic tape, so you have to cook the tape at a certain temperature in a controlled atmosphere with a certain humidity for hours, to melt the glue and quickly perform a digital transfer right after that.
It is a risky operation that can completely damage the tape or it can go well. Necrobutcher was the least enthusiastic about this project.
When I told Hellhammer that we were going to rework the drum sound, he was interested but wanted to do it himself. So we sent him to work with Jaime and it went very well. They spent two days fixing everything! There were a lot mishaps on the recording of this album, double triggers everywhere, it just wasn't the same level of technology. At the time, they did the drums with ADAT, which has a terrible sound. So basically, Jaime and Hellhammer went full Sherlock Holmes to study every hit on the drums and found a sound that satisfied everybody.
We made a kind of compromise on the sound, which makes it good while keeping the original atmosphere, but giving a more organic side to the drums, less plastic.
And Necrobutcher, over time, came to accept the idea, when I showed him artworks. I told him that his album was 20 years old, that even Pink Floyd and the Beatles remastered their albums. It's not a bad thing, it's not going to hurt your credibility, you're not committing a crime.
The other three members found the project interesting. I provided the artwork, we had to pay three artists before finding one on which everybody agreed, which is this kind of Christ in a Leonardo da Vinci style, which is in front of the ruins of Christianity, a very esoteric piece, a bit religious, something Mayhem had never done before, with that kind of dead dove in his arms. I know that people haven't reacted well to this new artwork at the beginning, I find it fabulous.
It looks like a medieval piece from the Quattrocento! It's Glyn Smyth, known to have worked on the SubRosa artworks, who did that. I think this guy is really, really talented. In short, the album no longer has this Duracell rabbit side that I could not stand anymore, the album revives, got modernized. And you see, this album could come out today, with this sound, and it would still be good. And what was Blasphemer's feeling about the project, knowing that he composed the album? He agreed from the start when I mentioned the idea.
He was like : "Yes, yes! Thank you, we will finally be able to redo this drum sound! We will correct that! Maniac was enthusiastic but said he would not rerecord any vocals, saying he could not do better than his original performance. So we had to completely recover the original vocal parts. For the rest, it's basically fixing the drum parts, for guitars, you should talk with Gomez-Arellano, but I don't think there is any change. What was your best Mayhem concert and when did you see them for the last time?
See the Necrobutcher interview given for the documentary A Headbanger's Journey? It was when they played Wacken in , that concert. Maniac played with his knives and playing with his pigs heads. He tried to throw and plant the knife on the stage ground, but the blade bounced and he got his hand cut open, really deeply. Blood started to spill pretty bad on stage and instead of doing what you and I would have done: stopping and running quickly to the hospital to get stitched, he ended the show like that.
And that drove him crazy. He was losing blood, it both irritated and excited him. And then, the whole band felt that something was happening, probably the most vicious Mayhem concert I've ever seen. After their set, Maniac fainted, as he had lost too much blood. It was Gunnar Sauermann former journalist now working at Wacken who drove him to the hospital. He got sewed, came back and got fucked up. What the hell?? Necrobutcher got angry, out of his mind, because they all were in a daze.
And he did this interview with Sam Dunn where he insulted everybody! I was sitting there right out of the frame, you can see Blasphemer sitting next to him, holding his head, like "Damn, but what the fuck is he doing? But Blasphemer was losing it too, he was no longer able to speak. And I was there, in fits of laughter, thinking to myself : "Damn, it's fantastic! This will become legendary.
They also had done a some of quiz test just before. They were playing against Satyricon and Mayhem had won because a journalist had spun them the answers in advance. Satyr was enraged! That day was insane : drugs galore, girls everywhere, Maniac who came back from the hospital and took five shots of Jack to "disinfect". Mayhem is a band that is now working on stage, they work well. Before that, it could be crazy one day and terrible the next day.
Black metal has been an epoch-making genre, do you see any other current forms of music that carry the same level of revolt, or is black metal in your opinion the last extreme musical and lyrical uprising? On a musical level there are a couple of punk bands such as World Burns To Death and Skitsystem that are interesting.
His studies can come in handy now that he for the very first time is about to join the ranks of employees working an ordinary full-time job. He refuses to name any of them. Punk and country In the meantime, his new punk outfit Bomberos is his main outlet for lyrical and creative needs.
Apart from that project, Neddo Cadaver and I might get together to play some country tunes. But will we ever see him on a stage in a metal-setting in the future after such a difficult split with his former band?
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