Mayhem (NOR) - Chimera (2004)^{Release ID: 521}

After "Grand Declaration Of War" received a less than positive response I was interested to see where Mayhem would go next. I actually quite enjoyed the GDOW experiment & felt that it was unfairly criticized. The question was would they continue to expand on those ideas or revert to the tried & true. Although the answer to that question is not entirely straight forward "Chimera" leans further towards the older sound than the new.  

This time we see Mayhem reverting to a similar sound to that of 1997's "Wolf's Lair Abyss" EP which contained a fairly brutal black metal attack with some more technical song & riff structures than they had attempted before. There were a couple of things that frustrated me about "Wolf's Lair Abyss" & both of those things have been improved on with "Chimera". Firstly the production is comfortably the best of their post-"De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" releases. The weak drum sounds that plagued the last couple of releases have been improved on & the guitars have continued with the fuller sound found on GDOW. Secondly the song structures are a bit tighter than they were on WLA.  

Another notable feature of "Chimera" is the riffing of Blasphemer which is very adventurous & you can definitely hear a strong death metal influence (Morbid Angel & Death in particular) as well as the more traditional black metal one. There's a greater sense of melody than we're used to hearing from a Mayhem record & it makes for a different atmosphere. I feel that this is one of the reasons behind many people's criticisms of this album as it's not quite as dark as your average Mayhem record but personally I really love Blasphemer's approach here. Not all of the more progressive sections work completely but they keep things interesting. Tempo-wise "Chimera" is a pretty brutal record too. Hellhammer really gives his kit a good belting but there's also enough variety & some nice progressive elements to keep things interesting.  

Overall I think "Chimera" is a solid black metal record with lots of energy & some fresh ideas in the riff department. Some songs are stronger than others but there can be no doubt that you are listening to a class act throughout. It's not as dark & menacing as "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" but it's good to see that Mayhem aren't going to live in the past. In my opinion this is Mayhem's best release since 1994.