After listening to this album a few times, I only have one question to ask; what the FUCK was that all about? This is easily one of the most bizarre albums I’ve heard in a long time. I used to think Mayhem were a black metal band, albeit not a very good black metal band, but a black metal band nevertheless. Their new album, Grand Declaration Of War, makes absolutely no sense, as one of the most revolutionary bands in the entire black metal genre, why are they now following every trend in the genre? This would be like Suffocation reforming, deciding to stop playing technical brutal death metal and starting up as a Korn wanna be band, yet keeping the Suffocation moniker. It just makes no sense. While I must admit the drumming of Hellhammer is impressive, as he just seems to become a better skinsman with each recording he appears on, the rest of the music is just ridiculous. The guitaring sounds so mainstream and un-Mayhem-like that you question whether someone at the recording plant shipped out the wrong CDs with the wrong sleeves. The band has even gone as far as to use horrificly mainstream techno-industrial music elements on the second half of the album, "Part III", track 6 in particular, where it sounds as though the band decided to have a gay sex orgy with the members Marilyn Manson. The most horrifying part of this album is the vocals of Maniac. He spends most of the album in spoken voice, rambling like an insane norwegian college student at a local pub going on about armageddon and the end of the world with his fellow schoolmates. I’m sure that pub is probably frequented by a lot of men who wander in wearing leather chaps and black leather caps, yet don’t own motorcycles. This album is the equivalent of Metallica going from Master Of Puppets to Load. This is not the real Mayhem, and this is most certainly not black metal. I’m sure if they were still around today, Euronymous would probably be wishing someone would stab him to death and Dead would probably once again blow his brains out after the band they helped make famous turned into the festering piece of shit they are today. Listening to Mayhem reminds me of eating a donut. Old Mayhem is like the original donut, round, full, covered with sprinkles and chocolate, a true delicacy. It is eaten, digested and comes out the other end as a round spherical piece of shit. You can shape it into a donut, you can smother it in chocolate and you can add sprinkles to it as much as you like, but it is not a donut, it is just a piece of shit covered in sprinkles, just like this CD. I’m sure this album will sell quite well, then again, people like Dimmu Borgir and Cradle Of Filth… I have no hope left for humanity, we are doomed.

Written By: Teufel