Life Eternal

Are you willing to exchange currency for slight variations of things you have already owned? Are you stuck forever in the early to mid 90s? Do you have a Mayhem hardon the size of a shadowy cathedral? These are all questions to mull over when considering a purchase of Life Eternal, which is a tape of rough mixes from the De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas sessions, originally made by Attila Csihar. If this were any lesser band, of course, something like Life Eternal would be almost guaranteed to be ignored, but Mayhem have the advantage of an almost Beatles-esque rabid following who collect bootleg recordings, rare and vintage clips and just about anything else they can get their hands on. Such is the reward for notoriety. Necrobutcher, Hellhammer and Euronymous could have recorded themselves chatting over beers at a noisy disco, or taking a piss on a camping trip while shooting the breeze, and people would pay for it.

So, at least with Life Eternal, there is some music to experience. Five cuts from the full-length album the band were about to unleash, with some altered vocals that didn't all make the final cut of the record. Side by side, there's not much of a difference in the actual music. You'll hear a click track here, where on DMDS it disappears. The guitars sound slightly more subdued than on the full-length, where they are more potent and bright. But the biggest deviation is likely in Attila Csihar's performance. The style is pretty similar, but his enunciation on several of the lines is changed. You might hear some more of his cleaner, low-end droning style than on the 'official' version of a track, and because the guitars are not as prominent here, he does stand out slightly more. There is also a brief drum intro to "Funeral Fog" which the band clipped off during the full length mixing and mastering, but it's all of about a second and really adds nothing...I can see why it was castrated.

All told, this is not something I really cared for. I enjoy Attila a great deal, but I'm not sure I'm willing to exchange his dialed up presence for the less resilient guitars, and even so, I never found the varied vocals to be all that more compelling than DMDS. It makes a lot of sense to me why these are not the versions on the final album, and thus it seems like no more than a means to rake in a few bucks with a limited edition release. Granted, with its DVD box packaging and other baubles, Life Eternal is a sure collectors' item, and a cool little 'peep' from Csihar's personal label Saturnus, which hasn't seemed. But for its musical value, it's a pretty vapid affair best suited to those that like to pore over the details, and in no way supercedes the quality of the tracks' inevitable evolution.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

You thought you liked De Mysteriis Domini Sathanas? You will fucking die this time around! THIS is what that album could have been. Sure it's only five of the songs in a random order, but it completely owns the 'real' versions of these songs. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have to strangle Atilla for sitting on these songs for as long as he did - they're that awesome.

This, for all intents and purposes, is the exact same as the studio album. The only difference I can hear with the actual songwriting is the little drum piece to start "Funeral Fog". It's the same death metal tremolo riffs with just enough thrash influence as to remain interesting and worthwhile, but with the added bonus of actually being able to hear the guitars (and bass!) That was my major gripe with the original release - everything was buried under too much distortion, overloud drums, and you couldn't really understand what was being said. This appears to be a pre-production version of these songs as the vocals are subtly different, but Csihar is still puking out blasphemies and sounds evil as fuck.

The previously mentioned "Funeral Fog" is probably the highlight, but that might just be because it was the first Mayhem song I ever heard. "Freezing Moon" is also good and surprisingly better than the version from the 'Projections of a Stained Mind' compilation with Dead on vocals. The rest are certainly no slouch either.

Heh, I wish the other three songs from the album were on here, but that would be have been a little much to ask for (it'd be kind of cool to comprehend Atilla singing in Latin, but that's another matter entirely).

This is completely and totally awesome. Far and away the best Mayhem.