What follows is a long digression about neutrinos, sun cults, the Baalbek monolith in Lebanon \u2013 where Attila once recorded an album named after it for his Void Ov Voices solo project \u2013 and the advanced, non-human civilisations who, it stands to reason, had the sole means to build them.<\/p>\n
Article continues below <\/p>\n
You may like<\/p>\n
At one point during his discourse, he brings out a spoon looped in on itself by a Reiki master in front of him, later presented to his current Mayhem <\/a>band members to varying degrees of credulity. As much as he can give Blood Incantation a run for their money in the cosmic conspiracy stakes, it all amounts to one fundamental principle.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat it all is, is a mystery, and that\u2019s my biggest driving force, one that\u2019s very deep inside of yourself. It opens your mind and it releases something in you. I still don\u2019t know exactly what happened, but something profound changed in me, and maybe the sun is just a symbol of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mayhem – Realm of Endless Misery (Official Visualizer) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n Attila is speaking via Zoom from a hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Mayhem, the foundational and sometimes notorious black metal<\/a> band he\u2019s fronted on and off since late 1992, and whose history encompasses death by suicide, church burnings, murder and the creation of a groundbreaking debut album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas<\/a>, have just played here as part of a world tour to commemorate their 40th anniversary.<\/p>\n Even if the shaved crown of hair cradling the back of his head and short tufts of moustache sprouting from each side of his mouth suggest an aristocrat in exile from a world governed by different laws of grooming to our own, he\u2019s far more down to earth than you might expect. Constantly walking around the room as he holds his phone, he\u2019s chirpy, chatty and, at 54, buzzing with genial energy.<\/p>\n The playful glint in his eyes suggests that the various wild guises he\u2019s adopted onstage over the years \u2013 from decomposing anti-Pope to cowled wicker man, mirror monster, alien-birthing fish creature and mummy \u2013 aren\u2019t just mediums to channel dark energy so much as stuff he still can\u2019t believe he\u2019s gotten away with. As he puts it: \u201cSomehow I\u2019ve always been dealing with the dark side of nature, and that\u2019s pretty strange, because I\u2019m not a dark person in life, it\u2019s just part of the channel I have.\u201d<\/p>\n “It\u2019s a dedication to Dead and Euronymous, but we also have to face up to all parts of our past.”<\/p>\n Attila Csihar<\/p><\/blockquote>\n True to form, Mayhem\u2019s seventh album, Liturgy Of Death, marks a band still deeply in touch with their roots, yet still pushing the envelope for what black metal can be and still do. Sweeping in its scope, it\u2019s a turbulent whorl of revelations scoured by Attila\u2019s possessed, otherworldly croak as if a stormfront were taking on demonic form, and girded with cold-steel riffs heralding a terrifying new age to come.<\/p>\n \u201cI always felt like Mayhem was futuristic somehow,\u201d says Attila. \u201cWhen people talk about why De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is evergreen, it\u2019s not just about everything that happened around it, it\u2019s also that musically it was so advanced. There have often been futuristic elements since. We have our roots, and it\u2019s good to be related to the past, but this album has a balance. It has old elements, but it\u2019s still present-sounding, and it\u2019s still futuristic.\u201d<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n While some of their contemporaries have left black metal\u2019s incendiary past behind them, for Mayhem it\u2019s inescapable. They\u2019re willing to take on the role as black metal standard bearers and chroniclers for the extraordinary legend they gave rise to.<\/p>\n The 40th anniversary tour, which will wrap up in Australia a month after we speak, has featured guest spots from original drummer Manheim and former vocalist Maniac, the latter of whom briefly fronted the band in the late 1980s before returning for a longer stint between 1995 and 2004, when he was replaced by Attila.<\/p>\n The tour also features footage of the three former members who lie at the heart of the Mayhem mythos: original vocalist Dead, whose 1991 death by suicide still reverberates throughout the scene; guitarist and black metal lore-giver Euronymous; and the man who stabbed the latter to death in 1993, arch villain and far-right ideologue, Varg Vikernes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very emotional,\u201d says Attila. \u201cIt\u2019s a dedication to Dead and Euronymous, but we also have to face up to all parts of our past.\u201d<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: press)<\/p>\n Attila\u2019s own, pre-revelation roots lie in proto-black metal primitives Tormentor, the band he founded in 1985 in his mid-teens, while going under the fortuitous stage name of Mayhem. His love of metal had been instilled by an Iron Maiden<\/a> show in 1984, which took place in a parking lot of the Budapest Sportcsarnok stadium after Hungary\u2019s then-Communist regime refused to let them play inside.<\/p>\n But he found his true calling after he discovered Venom\u2019s Black Metal<\/a> album in an underground shop. Tormentor\u2019s first show was at a talent competition, with Attila sporting a \u201ccrazy\u201d mask and black cape borrowed from a theatre school (remarkably, they got through to the second round). But as they gradually started gaining popularity within Hungary\u2019s isolated metal scene, they were also receiving attention from the country\u2019s crumbling regime. Official gigs had to be sanctioned by the state, and lyrics parsed for political content.<\/p>\n \u201cThe officials were more concerned about the punk bands,\u201d Attila remembers, \u201cbut even then, we recorded an album, Anno Domini, and I had to send them the lyrics. But then the Communist system collapsed, and in all the chaos, the album never got released anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the album demos he\u2019d handed out had made its way to Norway via the tape-trading network. In 1991, Attila got a \u201cvery polite\u201d letter from Euronymous asking if he would be up for joining Mayhem because their singer had recently died. Euronymous sent him two tapes, one for their already released EP, Deathcrush, and the demos for what would eventually become De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember when I first heard that demo,\u201d Attila recalls. \u201cI was like, \u2018Holy shit, I never heard anything like this ever.\u2019 I never heard riffs like that before, I never heard drumming like that. Some of my friends thought they\u2019d sped up the tape. This was something really special.\u201d<\/p>\n “Everybody disappeared, and I thought they were on vacation.”<\/p>\n Attila Csihar<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Although Hungarians were allowed short trips to the West every three years under the previous regime, Attila\u2019s first trip to Norway turned out to be a bit of a culture shock.<\/p>\n \u201cEuronymous and Varg [then Mayhem\u2019s bassist, having replaced Necrobutcher, who left temporarily following Dead\u2019s suicide] met me at the train station. Euronymous was wearing a bullet belt, but Varg was in chainmail. He was really serious about it, he said he was wearing it to protect himself.<\/p>\n \u201cWe stayed at Euronymous\u2019s place for a few days, and it was kind of gothic inside, with red curtains. We travelled up to Bergen to stay at Varg\u2019s place. He had a very fucking nice flat. He had a washing machine and a dishwasher. He was definitely from a more wealthy background. He was still like a metal dude. He was more into Tolkien, fantasy worlds, and the dark stuff. Completely different to what he later became.\u201d<\/p>\n With the wave of church burnings yet to begin, Attila\u2019s outsider status left him largely unaware of the scene politics and growing fanaticism that were brewing at the time. Still reeling from the vision he\u2019d recently experienced, and immersed in books about Egyptology, his newfound awakening became a germinating factor that took De Mysteriis\u2026 into realms not even his new bandmembers could have contemplated.<\/p>\n Rather than the screech that would become de rigueur among black metal vocalists, Attila produced a gnarled, throat-singing rasp \u2013 a fever dream of incantations contorting itself as if to bring something unbidden into being.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew I wanted to do something different from what Dead had done, and I was also a bit influenced by [Slovenian avant-industrialists] Laibach,\u201d says Attila. \u201cBut I was also under the influence of that mystery energy I\u2019d encountered. I did the vocals with all the lights off, surrounded by candles. I didn\u2019t know of course what the album would become, but I knew it was going to be something very special.\u201d<\/p>\n It was, though it would be overshadowed by events before it even came out. On August 10, 1993, Varg Vikernes was driven from Bergen to Oslo by Snorre Ruch of solo BM project Thorns and stabbed Euronymous to death. Back in Budapest at the time, Attila was initially unaware of what had transpired.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know what was going on at all, everybody disappeared, and I thought they were on vacation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until October that someone pointed out a small news section in a Hungarian music paper that said Euronymous had been killed. I couldn\u2019t fucking believe it. I totally lost my way for a few years after that. I thought the cosmos was against me.\u201d<\/p>\n Mayhem – De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas @ Brutal Assault 2015 – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n Euronymous\u2019s murder meant that the release of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas was delayed until May 1994. With their guitarist and animating force gone, Mayhem were no more. Instead, Attila began working on his own experimental projects, before rediscovering his love of industrial music by joining Italian electro-black metallers Aborym as guest vocalist on 1999\u2019s Kali Yuga Bizarre album, subsequently becoming their full-time vocalist for two more records. By 2003, he was collaborating with Sunn O))), touring with them and appearing on 2004\u2019s White2 album.<\/p>\n \u201cStephen [O\u2019Malley, one half of Sunn O)))] invited me to play on their first European tour,\u201d says Attila. \u201cThe first show was in Linz in Austria, and there were, like, seven people there, but that was a really cool show. It taught me that it doesn\u2019t matter how many people are in the audience, you have to always give your best, because you never know what\u2019s gonna happen. That was one of the best lessons in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, a return to Mayhem was never out of Attila\u2019s mind, not just because of the way his initial stint had dissipated without resolution, but also because Necrobutcher had been intermittently in touch since the band reformed, floating the possibility of a reunion if circumstances allowed.<\/p>\n After tensions with then-singer Maniac reached a head in the mid-2000s, Attila met with his ex-bandmates at a Mayhem show in Italy. His second stint in the band began in 2004.<\/p>\n \u201cI never got any money from De Mysteriis\u2026 because of what happened, but I wasn\u2019t trying to fix the past \u2013 it was important to me to bring the energy of where I was then,\u201d says Attila. \u201cI was proud to be back in Mayhem, but also because we could all explore together again.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s subsequently recorded four albums with Mayhem (2007\u2019s Ordo Ad Chao, 2014\u2019s Esoteric Warfare, 2019\u2019s Daemon and the new Liturgy Of Death). But Attila\u2019s seemingly unquenchable curiosity is reflected in the breadth of his work outside of the band. He\u2019s been a guest presence for a host of other artists, from Norway\u2019s Keep Of Kalessin and Ulver to Skitliv – the band created by Shining (SWE)\u2019s Niklas Kvarforth and Maniac \u2013 and former Swans vocalist Jarboe.<\/p>\n “I still think of Joey Jordison every day.”<\/p>\n Attila Csihar<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n![\"Mayhem](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770423862_972_maxresdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n
![\"Mayhem](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2n2tPHB2hNUiV6q8De2FZX.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n\n
\n![\"Mayhem](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776001163_87_maxresdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n