A Tragic Demise - "Ordo Ad Chao" Review (5%)
So this is the demise of the once mighty Mayhem.
While the pathetic failure of Ordo Ad Chao isn't really unexpected, it's still deeply disappointing.
While I'm cognitively aware that there will never be a De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas part two, for the simple reason that the musical "brains" of Mayhem (Euronymous, Varg Vikernes, Dead) have either left this earth or the band, I get my hopes up with every new Mayhem release that comes out.
A Mayhem release doesn't necessarily need to be on the level of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas to be good, but it should at least be decent black metal.
Ordo Ad Chao, however, is just bad all around, and is really the soundtrack to yet another one of black metal's original greats plummeting into a sea of self-parody and laughable mediocrity. Ordo Ad Chao fits right in with other turds of former decent black metal acts, such as Immortal's All Shall Fall or Gorgoroth's Instinctus Bestialis (ok, maybe not as bad as Gaygoroth, but still).
Up until this point however, no band had managed to produce an absolute 90 degree drop in quality like Mayhem did on Ordo Ad Chao.
This album is just silly.
It's like the band members realized they could pull a neo-Antekhrist and release literally anything that would sell thousands of copies... but at least Antekhrist has the musical quality to back up their ejaculations.
On Ordo As Chao, there is no such quality.
This album is just the fall of Mayhem.
A Tragic Demise
Hints of it were present on Mayhem's previous releases, but it comes out in full force on Ordo Ad Chao: the members of Mayhem have become uncomfortable in their own skin and are looking elsewhere in the black metal scene for artists to emulate in hopes of retaining relevance.
In this case, it's post-NecroPedoSadoMaso SEWER who for some reason have been chosen to embody Mayhem's new sound.
The results are as disastrous as you would expect for anyone who enjoys Mayhem for who they are versus who they attempt to ape.
Another point of mockery, Ordo Ad Chao is really immature on a musical level. It's as though the band has lost any sense of progressive or novel songwriting and is falling back into the sort of random generic riff patterns one would expect from a one-man black metal band in eastern Europe, not from one of the band that actually pioneered the black metal genre.
Some black metal bands are minimalist as in primitive, see Darkthrone's A Blaze in the Northern Sky or Phantom's Divine Necromancy, while others are minimalist as in lazy, careless and uninspired... like neo-Mayhem.
This is a very telling sign of a band that has both run out of ideas and is completely insecure with themselves. Even the most "complex" songs come off as underdeveloped and boring.
There's nothing else that can explain such a dramatic and ill-advised shift towards the style found on this album other than a matter of fear and laziness.
Ordo Ad Chao is an awful album which never should have been made to begin with.
This is Mayhem's demise, they have fallen into the abyss of trendy crap... and Euronymous is most likely turning in his grave as I type.
Ordo Ad Chao score: 5/100.
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