Classic Album Review : Mayhem - Pure Fucking Armegeddon (1986)
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The first record is a cornerstone in the career of any band. It will either dictate the entire relationship to their fanbase (Black Sabbath, Guns N’ Roses, Pearl Jam) or become an intriguing prelude to a transformation (Slayer, Slipknot, Iron Maiden). First records are often revered or at least universally acknowledged, but almost never voluntarily forgotten by the artist’s fanbase. I’ve been into Mayhem for over twenty years now and no one really wants to talk about their demo Pure Fucking Armageddon.
I believe the reasons are self-evident, but I also believe they’re a mistake. Without being a misunderstood masterpiece, Pure Fucking Armageddon is Mayhem’s Mayhemiest record and should be celebrated as such.
But what is Pure Fucking Armageddon exactly? It is 27 minutes of poorly recorded black metal split into four songs (three or which are played twice) and two noise intros. The band counted only three members then: controversial co-founder and guitar genius Euronymous, non-controversial co-founder Necrobutcher who shared vocal duties with the former and drummer Manheim. They did not knew what they were doing, but they totally did.
Each of them were either 17 or 18 at the time. It’s not clear.
The two most important songs on Pure Fucking Armageddon are Carnage and the title song, which they still play live today. The latter is a particularly brilliant, unbridled piece of guitar riffage set to wonderfully juvenile lyrics about hell on Earth and some kind of Satanic war. It still rips today. Anaal Nathrakh covered it a decade and a half later and showed how fucking timeless it was. So, there’s history on this demo. Fuzzy, unlistenable history, but history nonetheless.
What makes the recording of these songs so memorable is how terrible it is. The vocals in particular sound like Euronymous and Necrobutcher are just breathing really hard into the microphone. It’s so bad that on the second side of the demo, they don’t even bother singing. These are just instrumental rehearsal versions of the songs. This complete lack of professionalism was both a) predictable for a band of 17 year olds and b) kind of what makes their charm.
Because it doesn’t really matter that Pure Fucking Armageddon’s sound is spectacularly poor. It doesn’t matter for two reasons. First, it more or less set the template for what 90s black metal lo-fi recording should aim for and second, the malevolent energy swirling around the band transpires on this demo more than on any of their releases except perhaps for Deathcrush. Pure Fucking Armageddon doesn’t sound great, but it feels evil as hell.
That leads me to Voice of a Tortured Skull and Mayhem, the two noise songs that are really guttural expression of negative feelings. The former in particular as the second sounds more like a pack of vulture circling over your corpse and pecking at the remains. Pure Fucking Armageddon was the start of a long, self-destructive pilgrimage towards arson, suicide and murder that would haunt the band’s reputation and music and it is all over the record’s atmosphere.
These are are two non-songs. Ambient noise compositions meant to translate feelings of primal anger and dread, drenched in high pitched screams and hostile feedback. They are confrontational, mean spirited and sometimes painful. It’s the most metal thing I’ve ever heard that doesn’t have any traditional characteristic of metal: composition, technical mastery, lyrics, attitude. It’s just bare hellfire for your ears. Some kind of extreme litmus test.
The genius of Pure Fucking Armageddon is to somewhat democratize and gatekeep extreme music at the same time. It strips metal from its elitist musical components, but uses imagery and dissonance to create a powerful, mysterious paradigm that would’ve seen Tipper Gore ablaze if she ever heard it. Pure Fucking Armageddon is the album your parents were always afraid you’d bring home one day. It’s raw, animalistic and it wholeheartedly rejects the world.
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I haven’t talked about the two other songs on Pure Fucking Armageddon: Ghoul and the instrumental cover of Venom’s Black Metal. Neither of them are uninteresting, but the former is just a collection of ideas that didn’t have the staying power of Carnage of the title song and the latter is an exercise they were doing often in the early days. Mayhem is very much inspired by Venom. I believe they were a cover band in their beginning, so it was part of their repertoire.
If you’re looking for a borderline unlistenable cover of a Venom song, I strongly suggest you Witching Hour from Deathcrush. It’s a lot better.
Pure Fucking Armageddon is not a conventionally good album. Fuck, it’s not even conventionally listenable. But it’s interesting. Because it really creates this nefarious paradigm of violence and instability that permeated the band’s identity and that beckoned people who were struggling with these feelings. Pure Fucking Armageddon is both cathartic and conceptual, which is the unlikeliest combo I can think about for a metal record and it’s kind of awesome.
