Photos/Review: Mayhem celebrate 40 years of black metal madness on The Decibel Magazine Tour w/ Mortiis, Imperial Triumphant, & New Skeletal Faces
The longest-running heavy metal tour in North America resumed in 2025 with its most daring lineup yet. The controversial Norwegian black metal innovators Mayhem took the headline spot with support from Mortiis, Imperial Triumphant, and New Skeletal Faces. Mayhem have been actively touring in North America for the last few years and are taking the opportunity to headline The Decibel tour to celebrate the band’s historic 40th anniversary with a special career-spanning set. On Thursday, April 10, the tour made the first of three Southern California stops at The Observatory in Santa Ana before hitting Los Angeles on April 11 and San Diego on April 12.
New Skeletal Faces kicked off the night with an early yet kickass set at 6:30 pm. These death rockers from San Diego are supporting their 2024 release Until the Night and delivered a dark, groove-laden performance that, without a doubt, won over the sparse early crowd. Their 30 minutes on stage was the perfect primer for the remainder of the night.
New Skeletal Faces
Photo Credit: Chris Loomis
Hailing from New York City, Imperial Triumphant has successfully been carrying the torch for the future of Black Metal in the United States. Wearing futuristic, expressionless, robotic-looking masks, vocalist/guitarist Zachary Ezrin, drummer Kenny Grohowski, and Steve Blanco on bass stormed the Observatory stage and delivered a high-energy masterclass on American extreme black metal. The band is supporting their 2025 release, Goldstar and the majority of the setlist were songs from this new album. The crowd was certainly familiar with these New Yorkers, and the energy in the building was elevated during this explosive set.
Imperial Triumphant
Photo Credit: Chris Loomis
The pace of the night slowed down a bit as Mortiis took the stage and located himself behind his electronic organ and programming tools alongside drummer Jon Siren. Mortiis is often described as dungeon synth with elements of industrial tones, and on this night, it appeared the majority of, if not the entire set was from his 2020 release Spirit of Rebellion. With long dreadlocks and his signature troll half mask, Mortiis never addressed the crowd and just let the music do the talking.
Most of the songs were instrumentals with some lyrical chants and vocals thrown in at times. Although the pace of the night slowed, the crowd was totally into the performance often cheering loudly at triumphant parts of the songs. While extremely talented, Mortiis was an odd choice to play right before Mayhem.
Mortiis
Photo Credit: Chris Loomis
At 9:15 pm, the lights dimmed, and the video backdrop lit up and took you through five minutes of Mayhem history before Hellhammer took a seat at his massive drumkit, Necrobutcher on bass, and Teloch and Ghul on guitars appeared and kicked into “Malum” and then all hell broke loose as vocalist Attila Csihar appeared in his haunting signature corpse paint and blackened teeth. This tour was a celebration of the band’s 40th anniversary; they played select songs from all their LPs and EPs, starting with the newest and going backward in time.
Various graphics played on the video backdrop show different eras of the band and display miscellaneous Mayhem logos. Csihar is a master performer and changes his clothing a few times during the set. At one point, he was wearing a military-style beret with eyeglasses. The band pummeled through each era, and the evil energy went through the roof when the songs from De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas were played.
The band appeared in hooded robes, and Csihar left the stage when the last song of the main set, “Funeral Fog” was played as recorded vocals from original vocalist Dead were played over the live music. Dead committed suicide early in the band’s career, and that, along with guitarist Euronymous, whose bandmate Varg Vikernes murdered, has created a lot of the band’s past controversies.
The encore had the capacity crowd at its most active as “Deathcrush,” “Chainsaw Gutsfuck,” and “Pure Fucking Armageddon” ended the night. Mayhem just played one of their most epic and evil North American shows as it was quite a spectacle to get to witness music from every Mayhem era. Decibel Magazine nailed it again with another all-killer, no-filler tour here in 2025.
Mayhem
Photo Credit: Chris Loomis
