Movie Review : Pure Fucking Mayhem (2008)

Norwegian black metal outfit Mayhem was the band your parents were afraid of: they worshipped Satan, dressed in black, had self-destructive behavior on stage and... well, eventually murdered one another. Point is: there are several urban legends about Mayhem and most of them are true. What you might not know is that Mayhem is still active today, with bassist Necrobutcher for only remaining founding member. What kind of people are they? What do they think about their turbulent past? I've watched 2008 documentary Pure Fucking Mayhem, hoping to polish my knowledge on a band I've loved for almost two decades now. 

Pure Fucking Mayhem is quite raw. It's a series of face-to-face interview with members/past members Necrobutcher, Attila Csihar, Kjetil Manheim and some guy named Occultus, who played bass for the band for like, 6 months or something. There's also a female narration that sometimes intercuts the interviews to connect the dots and contextualize anecdotes with archives photos and footage. It doesn't offer any exclusive Mayhem stories that no one previously knew about, but it does offer some pretty great insight on the band's most infamous antics. 

The story most non-black metal enthusiasts know Mayhem for is the murder of guitarist and co-founder Euronymous, by then bassist Varg Vikernes *. Pure Fucking Mayhem doesn't dwell a long time on the murder itself, but provides great insight on what type of person Euronymous was and how it lead him to his own demise. Other co-founding member Kjetil Manheim explains that his guitarist's life was basically a theater and that spent a lot of energy trying to freak people out. He was so into his character at some point that he sought fucked up people and became competitive with them, about who was the most evil. That's how Vikernes ended up in the band and that's how he ended up killing Euronymous.

Varg Vikernes became a member of Mayhem in the first place because of another infamous story. Then vocalist Dead notoriously killed himself in 1991 and most notoriously had his cadaver feature on the cover of bootleg album Dawn of the Black Hearts, which turned Necrobutcher away from the band for... basically the rest of Euronymous' life. The infamous guitarist's commitment to evil was reaching a boiling point even then. If there's anything to learn from Pure Fucking Mayhem is that while Euronymous inspired Mayhem, he might've dragged them down, more than anything. While his legacy's undeniable, the band's been doing fine without him for close to twenty-five years now.

Mayhem is perhaps the most important band in black metal history. They laid a blueprint everybody else's been trying to imitate since then, but that Mayhem itself keep trying to challenge, attracting praises and criticisms from their tormented, thrill-seeking audience. While Pure Fucking Mayhem was enlightening in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way, the band is still very much a mystery to me. Who's at the helm? How have they managed to remain so creative to this day? Mayhem will forever fascinate audiences because of its past but, also because how they've transcended it in such a seamless way.

7/10

* Who happened to front his own legendary band Burzum.