“It’s odd being given the task of “reviewing” a record that, if it were a person, would be in the age of majority. Mayhem’s Grand Declaration of War has remained a controversial record for arguably black metal’s most controversial band, and this remixed and remastered version is unlikely to change anyone’s mind on the contents. These contents were ably highlighted by Angry Metal Guy himself, and while him and I disagree on a lot, we agree on the merits of this record.” Grand remastering?
“I’m sure you are looking at the title of the review and my name being attached to it, and getting all sorts of nervous and anxious. Well, don’t be. We all know that Mayhem is one of the most influential black metal bands around, but we also know that their name is synonymous with both divisiveness within the fanbase and severe fluctuations in quality.” After his scandalous bashing of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, we just knew Grymm was the man to review this.
Every once in a while the metal scene collectively pisses on a band or record and someone needs to step up and defend why they like it. I normally don’t spend a lot of time defending shitty records, but sometimes genuinely interesting or good records get lampooned by an overly conservative heavy metal scene. And that calls for a professional contrarian to defend it! If ever there ever a professional contrarian, it would be me. So here I am to re-hash a record from my past that I still love that everyone else seems to have soured on (or never liked in the first place).
As world metal takes the stage, something that is happening more and more frequently these days, we’re going to be seeing more of these bands coming from places where metal just hasn’t ever shown its face earlier. Demonic Resurrection, as those of you familiar with Sam Dunn’s documentary Global Metal already know, are a band from India who play symphonic black metal. The third record in a trilogy The Return to Darkness is being released (as I understand it) as the band’s first international release via Candlelight Records. That Sam Dunn is a rockstar creating machine, it turns out. Though, when it comes to Demonic Resurrection, their music speaks for itself and if you give that music a stage that myriads of metalheads have access to, it’s not hard to see how they managed to break beyond their borders.
