Mayhem Bassist “Necrobutcher” Reveals They’re “Currently in the Studio to Record a New Album”
Earlier this month, we learned that the iconic Norwegian black metal outfit Mayhem was in the process of putting together their first full-length album since 2019. At the time, it was guitarist Teloch that was spilling the tea on the music, but thanks to a recent interview with Poland’s Noise Magazine (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), bassist and founding member Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud revealed that the band’s now been in the studio and cooking up some new jams.
“We are currently in the studio now to record a new album, which has been in the works for several years, obviously, ’cause the last album was in 2019, so it’s already six years. But that’s good.”
Once completdsfffe, the new album will be the band’s first since 1997 when they released ‘s Daemon and the 2021 EP Atavistic Black Disorder / Kommando. As for why it’s taken the band this long to put something new out, Necrobutcher said stems from the fact that the guys have prioritized a work and life balence.
“It’s more honest, I think, and it’s better for everyone that there is some space between the albums, because if you release albums too close to each other, it tends to be maybe just a repetition of your last album or very close to it, ’cause there’s no time to get new inspiration in between. So the longer the time it takes for the songwriters to distance themselves from the last project and to get new inspiration, the longer time it takes, the better it is. And then the longer time you have to evolve the songs in your head as a composer…”
“As a composer, I compare it to a painter. You paint and paint and paint, and in the end it’s hard to know when to quit. When is the painting really finished? Same with the songs. You can get lost. You have a song and you write it, and then it sounds good, but then you think, maybe that riff should go a little bit longer and maybe that riff shouldn’t repeat itself and maybe that other riff should repeat itself. And then, in the end, you don’t know when to stop. And then so it takes time for this thought process to to be thought through. That’s why always, even after the songs are recorded in the studio, you start to play them live and then they alter a little bit, but musicians, we call them the ‘live versions.’ But really, really the live versions is really how the song ended up to be, ’cause they were not completely matured when recorded, in a sense. That’s why they altered when we rehearsed them for live later, ’cause the alteration would be what we have come up with. And that’s why I love to release live albums too, because I feel like that’s how the songs should actually be. And also then you have the roughness from the live and not the studio where you can [perfect] everything and put on extra guitars or keyboards or whatever. So that’s the more honest expression. And sometimes I like the live versions much better.”
So there you have it. New Mayhem is en route, but it’ll be a bit of a wait…
