My kid enjoys the children’s book Pokko and the Drum by Matthew Forsythe. The lead character, a frog, finds their tribe by literally beating the drum. It’s a beautiful book with just as beautiful of a message. But there are a few pages that make me believe Forsythe is injecting the tale of Mayhem into impressionable minds.

A band member eats another band member in the middle of this book. The band does not break up. That is the story of Mayhem.

Mayhem is a Norwegian black metal band formed in Langhus in 1984. That’s the first sentence from Mayhem’s Wikipedia page. The first sentence should be:

Mayhem is that band that features a dude that killed another band member, a separate suicide documented on an album cover and was sorta tied to Norwegian church burnings.

Like most relatively informed music fans, I’m familiar with Mayhem. I’ve read Lords of Chaos, seen the documentary Until the Light Takes Us and watched the Jonas Åkerlund directed Lords of Chaos (featuring a stellar performance from Sky Ferreira!). I’ve listened to the the group’s six studio albums. I’ve done some deep YouTube dives of interviews with band members.

But I’m not a Mayhem fan. I’m not not a Mayhem fan, their stuff just doesn’t do it for me. There are hundreds of metal bands I’d place higher than Mayhem. Hundreds. Here’s a playlist proving my metal point.

My biggest issue with Mayhem is the music. It’s just fine. That’s not enough to warrant such a massive place in metal history.

I get it. Killing a fellow bandmate is going to garner some notoriety. But persevering forward after the tragic passing of one of the best metal bassists of all time is way more noteworthy.

I get it. Putting a crime scene photo on your album cover is noteworthy. But Pusha T did it better with Daytona.

I get it. Encouraging people to burn down churches seems neat but it’s just more privileged white kids destroying property without purpose. Go on TV’s most important variety show, rip up a picture of the Pope to shine a light on child abuse, sacrifice your career, get persecuted because of your gender and maybe then one band member of Mayhem is as badass as Sinead O’Connor.

I get it. Their early years makeup does rule. Corpse paint was and is a good look. But let’s not pretend KISS, Misfits and Mercyful Fate didn’t come first.

So, since their music is just OK, their story isn’t noteworthy for anything teachable (if I’m teaching my kid not to murder/abuse people close to them, I’m going with Phil Spector) and their best contribution is a rip-off of late 70s Misfits, when is the best time to teach my kid about Mayhem?

Never. The answer is never. I wish I didn’t know about Mayhem.

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