Interview: Attila Csihar (MAYHEM, TORMENTOR)

Hello Attila thank you or joining me. I know that you have a quite busy day today and you will have a show tonight.

Yeah we had a rehearsal and we are at the venue but that’s cool yah!

Oh great I will try to be short, not to take too much of your time. Okay?

Sure.

So let let's talk about Mayhem's new album, Liturgy of Death deals with something that has always surrounded MAYHEM — death. But now you're approaching the subject in your mid-fifties rather than as the young musician you once were. Has the meaning of death changed for you with age?

Oh, thanks for your question. But before going there, I just want to salute all the Bulgarian friends and crazy maniacs, black metal maniacs, and I’m really looking forward to come to Sofia in a couple of days. I think like in less than a week.

Yeah, You will play on 9^th of October here in Sofia!

Yeah, that's gonna be great. I've only played there a few times, so I'm really looking forward to it. And yeah, great to be there.

Back to your question — definitely, as you get older, like aged wine, so to say, you start to see things from a wider perspective. And yeah, this album is, like you said, it's correct. I think when you're above 50 — now I'm about 55 already, but when we wrote the album I was just above 50 — you see things differently, of course.

I've been on stage for more than 40 years now. I was with TORMENTOR from '85 and '86, and I had my first live shows back then. In those days it was mostly instinct. Now we've learned a lot through the path of life.

And I felt like, yeah, we're still here after 40 years. I also felt that now maybe I'm old enough, or wise enough hopefully, to touch this theme in a more profound way. Death is one of the biggest forces of nature, together with the creative forces, so it's a very significant thing. And it's something we all, as humans, have to face.

At least humans are cursed because we know we're gonna die. Animals don't know that, but they also die. Everything dies in this dimension. Everything fades away. Everything disappears in time, and that's one of the most profound laws of nature.

We try to deny this instead of... I mean, that's human nature. Of course, the survival instinct tries to deny death, but that's just an instinct to keep you alive. Rationally, I think we have to embrace it, or understand it in a more profound way.

It's also very strange to see that, as I get older, more and more people are dying around us. Not just people our age, but parents, relatives... everybody is getting older and passing away. And yeah, that's a heavy thing to face.

This whole album is about that, of course, but in a MAYHEM way. We're approaching it in a more philosophical way, not in a gore way — not talking about blood or mere killing and shit, but more about the philosophical and deeper aspect of it.

So yeah, that's pretty much how I tried to approach the lyrics, from different aspects.

Yeah, actually on Liturgy of Death, you wrote all the lyrics yourself, while on Daemon the lyrical work was shared between the band. Why did you want to take full responsibility for the lyrics this time, and did that make the album more personal for you?

Yeah, I mean, it's natural, you know. In MAYHEM, the creative force has always been the composer, the guitarist — or guitarists, in our case now, since we have two great guitar players — and the vocalist, of course. So we were always more defined that way.

With the previous album, I felt that because our lineup had finally become more stable, and because we also wanted to reconnect somehow with the roots, it could be a good idea to connect this, so to say, latest lineup — which is already more than 10 years old, maybe even 15 now, I don't know exactly — and kind of seal it.

That's why I thought it would be cool to get everyone involved in the lyrics. Plus, it was something we'd never done before, so that was Daemon.

But for Liturgy of Death, I just thought we'd go back to the more traditional way, so to say, and I would take care of the lyrics.

And yeah, it was pretty massive work, actually. It took some time, but of course it's not the kind of work where you sit down for eight hours a day. It takes time to collect all the good inspiration and ideas, put everything together and sort it out.

So yeah, it was nice work. Maybe the best lyrics I've ever written. Time will tell, you know. Time will tell.

The first time I saw MAYHEM live was 15 years ago already, I expected the corpse paint, spikes, torches and all the familiar black metal imagery. But once the show started, I could barely take my eyes off you. Your voice and stage presence almost make it feel like you become a different character up there. How much of that is consciously created, and how much simply happens once you step onstage?

Yeah, going on stage is kind of magical with this band, especially MAYHEM, and even with TORMENTOR. This kind of music is... I don't know, it's very ecstatic, maybe because of the esoteric aspect of it too. So there are more dimensions, so to say, added to it.

For me, it's kind of a trance state — a controlled trance somehow. I really love that. And all these things, like the corpse paint, the costumes and stuff, are just supporting that.

We could probably play totally without all these elements and it would still be good, but I think they add to the whole picture and make it more clear and complete. Since it's ritualistic music, it makes sense to have makeup and costumes.

A ritual means something special, a special act that is not just for this dimension, so to say. Something more transcendental — it's hard to find the right word for it. But I think “ritual act” is good.

When you do rituals, it's a special moment in a way. It's a celebration. You can look at tribes, but you don't even have to go that far. Look at ancient Egyptian or Indian scriptures, paintings and things like that. When they performed rituals, sacrifices or any kind of transcendental act, they normally didn't wear street clothes.

Even in tribes you see makeup, masks and all these things. So I think it's part of the whole thing and goes back to ancient roots. It's kind of natural to do that. It's a celebration.

I don't want to go on stage in sneakers and jogging pants and sing about other-dimensional, transcendental things. Somehow that doesn't fit.

Especially for me as a vocalist, since I'm kind of leading this ritual, I think it's important to represent that element. The others don't really use makeup, maybe some clothes and stuff, but that's normal. I think it's always been like that with MAYHEM too.

It doesn't really matter as long as it's honest and the element is there. Obviously, I bring that element and I like to do it. The others are also welcome to do it, but they don't have to.

But for me, being in the center and the focus, it's kind of mandatory. I think it just adds to the whole energy and the whole act. It makes it more complete to use these elements, like makeup.

Before going to Norway, you knew MAYHEM mostly through letters, tapes and stories. Then suddenly you were there, meeting these people face to face and seeing that world from the inside. How different was the reality from the image you had built in your head? Was there a moment when you thought, “Okay, this is much stranger than I expected”?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. (Laughs) Honestly, when I first heard about MAYHEM, I didn't know much about them. Maybe I'd heard of them, I'm not even sure if I'd heard the band.

My stage name in TORMENTOR was Mayhem, so I remember that was the first thing I associated with it. Like, “Holy shit, that's a strange coincidence — or an omen, or something like that.”

Then I got to know the stories and everything, and talked to the guys — mostly Euronymous, actually, maybe only him — by phone and through letters. We sent stuff to each other. He sent me some vinyls and tapes, and I sent him some stuff too.

At that time I was playing in a band called Plasma Pool, straight after TORMENTOR, which was this kind of occult, dark, electronic EBM style. I was trying to take the spirit of TORMENTOR to that level, but make it more industrial.

In the early '90s it was different from today. I still like that kind of extreme electronic music, but back then there were no computers, so it was very mystical, so to say, to play electronic music like that.

But back to your question — yeah, I was a bit surprised. For instance, from his voice I imagined Euronymous as this tall Viking, you know, this big Norwegian dude. So when I met him, surprisingly he was smaller than me. It's not a big deal, but I remember thinking it was strange.

The other thing was shocking in a completely different way. The first night we went to Euronymous' place in Oslo, it was dark, candlelight... He had this kind of goth, black metal furniture too, and we were sitting there quite seriously.

And that was the first time I was suddenly faced with all these magazines — hundreds, maybe thousands of them — already talking about MAYHEM, the church burnings and how other people had come under their influence and stuff like that.

I was like, “Oh wow, this is fucking hardcore.” One could say it was kind of scary, sitting in a room with these guys and being faced with all of this at once. But at that point in my life I was also very much into this kind of dark, esoteric or awkward stuff in my own way. So I could easily connect with these levels, these conversations and thoughts.

By the next day it was like we'd known each other for a long time. Everything suddenly felt kind of normal.

I don't know... It wasn't exactly an exam or a test, but it was something like that. We were getting to know each other and trying to figure out how deep the other person was, how far they would go. And I wasn't sure about them either. I thought maybe they were just a bunch of idiot metal kids, so to say, and all this black metal shit wasn't really that serious.

So it was definitely an interesting first night. I'll never forget it. It was exactly how you might picture it — dark, serious, in a way scary. We were kind of testing each other because we'd never met before, and this was a serious thing.

This album demanded everything. It had already been in the making for years because of financial reasons and, of course, because of Pelle's suicide, which delayed everything. I think Euronymous put everything he had into it, maybe even took out loans, because it was recorded at a very good studio, Grieghallen in Bergen, which was expensive. So it was quite a serious thing. The next day we had a rehearsal, and I remember being so happy. I felt like, finally, I had a real fucking good band — the real shit, you know. TORMENTOR was real too, but somehow it had become hopeless.

With Tormentor, we kind of lost it towards the end. The system in Hungary changed and a lot of shit happened. Of course, that change was a good thing, but it also kind of destroyed the release of TORMENTOR's Anno Domini in '89, when it was supposed to come out. Interestingly, Euronymous was also interested in releasing that old TORMENTOR recording, Anno Domini.

But anyway, at that first rehearsal I remember something else. I'd already heard these rumors back then. Some people had told me, “Yeah, they speed up the tape for the drums.” And I was like, “Really? Oh, fuck!”

So of course it was good to see that they didn't. Hellhammer was already amazing back then, and everything was really cool. And then... after that, everything completely fell into shit.

MAYHEM are probably one of the most famous bands in extreme music, not only because of the music but because of the almost mythological history surrounding the band — something that Lords of Chaos pushed even further into the mainstream. Does that history still help MAYHEM today, or can it become a burden when you're trying to create something new and write a new chapter for the band?

You know, most things in life, or in this dimension of existence, have both sides, like a coin. So obviously, the things that happened made MAYHEM huge, made the name huge, together with the record, which I think kind of changed the approach to black metal in general. No one could foresee that, of course. We just felt there were big expectations.

But people should understand something. Okay, the MAYHEM name and everything around it became huge, but MAYHEM itself went down to ashes. It totally burned down.

I remember when I lost contact with the guys, everybody disappeared, apart from Hellhammer — and ironically, he was the only one I didn't really have contact with. Everybody else was either in prison or dead suddenly. It was basically just me and Hellhammer left.

And from those ashes, the phoenix of this new wave of black metal was born.

I remember when I went to Euronymous' store, Helvete, I picked up an EMPEROR shirt. I think it was Wrath of the Tyrant or something like that. It had this artwork with the horseman and the scythe. I can't remember the artist's name, but it was the same artwork used by Skinny Puppy on an EP.

I didn't know EMPEROR at the time, but I picked it up and Euronymous said, “Yeah, they're a cool young band, very talented.”

So everything was kind of there already — in the egg, you know, or in the seed. From this foundation all these bands could rise up. Suddenly every other band got picked up too. They got contracts. They were great bands, no doubt about it, but MAYHEM had created this foundation. People started signing these bands, touring them and everything, while MAYHEM itself was dead.

So MAYHEM had to be reconstructed. And after such major changes in the lineup, I guess that wasn't an easy task. I understand why they decided to keep the lineup Norwegian at the time. That totally made sense.

But anyway, MAYHEM had been dead. They had to restart it, and that's not easy. Even if you have the name, people also have expectations.

I remember when I rejoined MAYHEM in 2004, I felt the same thing onstage. There was a bigger demand somehow. People expected something from you.

And they also went against the stream, which I think was not a bad thing — I don't want to judge — but with Grand Declaration of War they went completely against all the streams. That was a very brave artistic act. It became controversial for some people, but anyway...

De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and everything that happened around it were so important because it also opened the gates of hell, so to say, and all these other bands could come to the surface.

I think our name is still much bigger than the band in a way. Like you said, there was the movie and blah, blah, blah. But we don't actually have that many people at our shows. Why? Because our music is still extreme. The name is more commercial than our music, that's for sure. (Laughs)

You're touring with Marduk now, and over the years, they have faced lot of cancelations of the show just because some allegations for far right associations and bullshit like that. Where do you personally draw the line between legitimate criticism and censorship? Should a promoter, venue or authority ever have the right to decide that a band simply shouldn't be allowed to perform? What does banning a band actually achieve? Does it silence an idea, or can it sometimes make that idea even more powerful?

That's a good question, you know, because I think art should be free. Or maybe there should be a warning: this is the topic, and if you don't like it, don't listen to it. I mean, that's basic.

The second thing is politics, which is absolutely not my table. I'm really not into it. But I think as soon as you forbid something, it will always raise the interest of certain people, especially young people. It's like the apple — you can eat all the apples apart from this one, so of course you're gonna choose that one. That's already coded in our minds, you know, even from the Bible.

So I think banning things is kind of wrong. We should be more open to talk about them. I understand it's sensitive, and I understand it's shit, but it's still part of human history. We should somehow digest it finally.

And not just that. We should digest communism, other dictators, Pol Pot... put it all together. People talk about the Second World War all the time, but there were so many other horrible tyrants. Even the British Empire, I'm sorry, or the colonies. Look at those pictures of rich Englishmen being carried around by people on their shoulders in India and the colonies.

Or look at the communist tyrants, like Stalin, how cruel and evil they really were. You can go further and further. That's real evil.

And especially with politics, look at the news from the last few years. I don't want to go into it, but some of the things we used to talk about, even things I wrote albums about — secret societies, so-called satanic rituals, people eating children blah blah blah — now some of that kind of stuff appears in the news and suddenly people don't find it so funny anymore.

So I think it's very, very stupid. And with MARDUK, I think a lot of it is simply because they have these war themes. I've been touring with MARDUK for months now. We're very good friends, really gentle people. We never even talk about this stuff, not even as a joke. I asked Morgan, who's my friend, and he was basically like, “Man, it's just my pure interest. I just love that.”

He's fascinated by everything that happened during the Second World War. There are so many things there. You can talk with him about it forever — how things happened, why they happened, who financed what.

I really don't want to go too deep into this, but I think politics is just a screen, something they project to us. We never really know what's happening behind closed doors. They don't tell us. We're just the pawns. We're the... how do you call it?

Figures on the chessboard!

Exactly! We're just the figures on the chessboard. We don't need to know, and they don't want us to know.

And then we're talking about left wing, right wing and all this shit. Do you think there's gonna be an election after you die? Is it gonna be left or right wing? It's just human crap. In the bigger picture, it's something very recent. So for me, I just ignore it. I think politics in general is bullshit.

Maybe in smaller countries things can change a little, but if you look at the big countries, it's always the same. The big powers influence everything in the world. And again, the powers behind politics — who finances elections in the U.S., how this communist shit works in China — we don't really know. We don't know who's actually pulling the strings. So I'd be very careful with this shit.

I think politics keeps people afraid and constantly busy with stress, and then of course there are the wars. Look at all the wars. It's always about oil and money, at least in the last 50 years, I'm pretty sure about that, or some other resources. Before that it was colonies, or the Nazis, or whatever — the same shit in a different mask, almost.

Okay, there was the Holocaust. That's really bad. But then look at what happened in India, or in the U.S. when people came there. Is it a Holocaust or not when Native Americans were removed? Or South America — you call it colonization, bringing Christianity or bringing our culture, while murdering people, taking the gold and resources and making people slaves.

It's the same thing in a different mask. Okay, not exactly the same — and I respect the victims of the Holocaust — but what I'm saying is that with politics, we should somehow try to look behind the surface.

And that takes time and maybe the kind of wisdom we talked about earlier. When you live your life, you start to see things differently.

I saw a whole system collapse in front of my eyes when I was 17. I grew up in a dictatorship, basically, like you guys did. You're from Bulgaria, I don't have to explain it to you. It was the same shit. You could walk down the street and the cops could beat you up without even asking anything, and that was totally normal. You were supposed to be happy if you only got one punch instead of two. If you said something at school, your parents could be in trouble the next day, especially if it was something political. And this whole system was controlled by this giant power called the Soviet Union. It looked like it could go on forever. Nobody could really foresee the end. Then it started collapsing after Chernobyl and everything else.

It rotted from the inside.

Exactly. It was already rotten from the inside. Afghanistan and Chernobyl fucked it up, but before that you couldn't really see it coming.

And I saw that with my own eyes when I was 17 — a system that millions of people had believed in and supported for decade after decade. Actually much longer than Nazism, which lasted around 10 years. This lasted 50.

But it hasn't ended. It's still going on in some parts of the world.

Yeah! North Korea and shit. And nobody cares. Nobody does anything. Nobody cares about those millions of people, and they still make deals with this asshole.

Oh man, politics... I just hate it!

I'm pretty sure we could talk about this topic forever, but unfortunately we don't have much time left.

Oh yeah, yeah! Fuck politics!

Okay, thank you very much for your time. I want to let you rest before your show tonight. Any final words for your show in Sofia and for the people who are coming to see you?

First of all, my apologies for talking to you bullshit about politics.

Not at all. It had to be said!

And secondly, huge thanks to everyone supporting us.

If you come to our concert, we'll have a connection. I'm channeling something, you're channeling something, and we're in the same network in some sense. It's kind of a wider idea of a clan or... a family, but family isn't really the right word.

Be part of it. Come to the show and enjoy what we do. It's a great package — MAYHEM and MARDUK.

Just be there and get rid of all the bad things we talked about, not just politics. It's good to get rid of that shit emotionally.

So send me your demons. Come on!

Okay, Attila, thank you for this interview. It was a pleasure.

Thank you. See you soon. Bye.

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Author: Nikola Petras
October 2026