The setlist was a time-warp through their history—starting with newer material before clawing its way backward to their primal demos, stripping away layers of (relative) sophistication to expose the raw, bleeding heart of their origins.
Mayhem’s music and their notorious history are inseparable, feeding into each other like twin black flames. In an era of debates over separating art from artist, Mayhem obliterates the line: they are their art. This is not a band playing Black Metal—this is Black Metal incarnate, its chaos and controversy fully embodied.
The show itself was a dark ritual. Under dim, haunting lights and grotesque video backdrops, frontman Attila Csihar commanded the room like a sinister priest of the abyss, drawing the audience deeper into a chasm of rage and despair. Behind him, Hellhammer (drums) and Necrobutcher (bass)—two pillars of Mayhem’s legacy—unleashed a thunderous foundation of relentless blast beats and grinding low-end ferocity. Meanwhile, guitarists Ghul and Teloch conjured a blizzard of hellish riffs, a cacophony of malevolence that swallowed the Bataclan whole when they performed excerpts from their debut De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas.
For two unrelenting hours, Mayhem delivered pure, unadulterated Black Metal—music once condemned as too extreme yet now a cornerstone influence for countless genres. At the forefront of that legacy stands Mayhem, still feral, still defiant, still summoning the beast from within.
