De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

Recorded at Grieghallen Studios (The Grieg Memorial Hall) in Bergen, Norway between 1992 and 1993.

Produced together with Voices of Wonder.

The original Deathlike Silence pressing lacks a barcode and lyrics, its 4-panel booklet simply just contains a fold-out cover with pictures of Hellhammer and Euronymous, credits, copyright and contact info.

Front cover is a drawing of a monochrome photo taken from east side of Nidaros cathedral located in Trondheim, Norway. Colouring of the building on the front cover is blue (according to the book in the 25-year 5-LP box, the 2nd press CD had lyrics but the cover artist got no credits. Starting from the 3rd CD-press onward, the name of the cover artist for lyrics pages only - Jørgen Lid Widing - is written in the booklet in a completely different font - courtesy by Voices of Wonder).

All the CD's contain on the back cover: "A Tribute to Euronymous 15/04/1968 - 10/08/1993" with a promo photo of only Euronymous and Hellhammer. Attila Csihar, Varg Vikernes and Snorre W. Ruch's contributions are not mentioned anywhere. The CD itself features three very dark photos (taken by Snorre Ruch) showing the faces of Euronymous and Hellhammer, and a third face which is believed to be Attila (although this has never been confirmed by the band).

The album title "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" was conceived by Euronymous and was intended to be the Latin translation of "Lord Satan's Secret Rites", however the phrase is written in badly translated Latin. The word "Dom", is an abbreviation of "Domini" (often used as an honorific prefix for ecclesiastics of the Catholic Church), so the title more-accurately translates to something such as "About/Of Lord Satan's Mysteries". Equally the word "mysterii" is not only textually translatable as "mystery", but also can mean words such as "secret worship/ritual/rite". So, when pluralized as it is in the title, "Mysteriis" can indeed translate to "Secret Rites"; also with the word "Sathanas", is not the correct word for Satan in Latin, the correct word would be "Satanas" (without the 'h') or "diabolus". Moreover, the title-track "De Mysteriis dom Sathanas" contains phrases written in a rough Latin with typos and wrong cases/declensions that can lead to various translations.

Euronymous' murder by Vikernes (who plays bass on the album) occurred right before the initial release of the album. Accordingly, the family of Euronymous requested Hellhammer to remove all of Vikernes' bass tracks. Hellhammer promised that he would replace bass lines with his own, but he didn't know how to play bass, so the album was left with Vikernes' bass lines intact, albeit lowered significantly in the mix compared to the other instruments.

Contrary to popular belief, Snorre did not record guitars on this album, although he and Euronymous often exchanged musical ideas and so Euronymous included several riffs written by him on the record.

The lyrics of "Life Eternal" were originally written by Dead as a gift to Bull Metal, who played in Typhon, Masacre and Neurosis; but nevertheless those lyrics were used in De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas by the band. Also as a posthumous tribute to Dead and Euronymous, Bull Metal used the same lyrics for "Life Eternal" in his 1996 Typhon's album Unholy Trilogy, although with different music.

A bootlegged rehearsal of this album called From the Darkest Past was distributed sometime in the early 90's, featuring instrumental tracks recorded on Saturday May 16th, 1992.