Full Album Stream: Enslaved (Italy) – Mayhem

Forming some time in the mid-1980s under the name Mayhem, the Italian brothers Roberto and Maurizio Figliolia plus a bassist played a high energy, blood-stained thrash metal that bordered on full-blown Floridian death metal not unlike Possession and Death. Roberto, Enslaved’s drummer, says he and his brother Maurizio, who played guitars and provided vocals in Enslaved, first developed their skills “playing covers in the early eighties.” According to Roberto in 1984,  they “decided to call [their] bass player friend, Fabio, to form a real band … 

“At that time we formed the band we were listening to bands like Venom, Exodus, Slayer, Mercyful Fate and as opposed to today, at the time, the Italian metal scene was very active!” Roberto continues. “We recorded the first demo under the name ‘Mayhem’ in our city with little technical means with the help of our first bass player.  For the second demo, we changed our name to ‘Enslaved’ (which was the name of my brother’s previous band) and we decided to record it in a professional studio. We ended up choosing the Much More Studio in Florence as we were already familiar with the place. All the tracks were recorded and mixed in just three days using only our instruments and amps.”

The Italian Enslaved’s recordings were unearthed and delivered from dust and obscurity by Cist guitarist/HTH Productions owner Nick Komshukov. The Russian label boss says he’s a fanatic for “old school metal.” He says, “As you can tell by my band and the releases on my label, I really love old school metal, especially the period of thrash metal between the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I love spending a lot of time digging through the internet and searching for something old and rare, like old demos or any other recordings. It takes a long time, but it’s worth it. In doing this I accidentally found Enslaved’s demos and they blew my mind! I remember thinking: ‘This deserves to be re-released and given a second life,’ so I reached out to the band and we are organized to have the original recordings remastered at Toxic Basement Studios and here we are!”

Thirty years after the release of Enslaved’s demo Mayhem, Nick reached out to Enslaved, according to Roberto, “asking if [they were] interested in remastering and releasing all of [their] demo tapes on CD format.” 

Out on CD and digital formats on February 5 on HTH Productions, this is . . .

Mayhem

Get Mayhem on CD from HTH Productions on February 5