Grand Declaration of War

In his book Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal, Jeff Wagner wrote that Grand Declaration of War features "a variety of vocal shadings to match the multi-layered music", between "A Time to Die", described by Wagner as "one minute and forty-eight seconds of black calculus", "A Bloodsword and a Colder Sun" offering "squishy electronic groove, so close to trip-hop that it instantly became the album's most controversial track" and the "mesmerizing ten-minute sprawling landscape of doom" "Completion in Science of Agony". The album's "sonic clarity" was "a complete 180-degree turn" from the band's early "scuzzy 'necro' approach".[1] Parts of the black metal scene had hoped Mayhem would not reform after the murder of the original guitarist Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth as "that would not be right",[6] or at least were "rather sceptical when it was known that [sic] MAYHEM should go on even without Dead or Euronymous".[7] Many longtime Mayhem fans despised Blasphemer because "he wasn't Aarseth".[1] Jeff Wagner calls Grand Declaration of War "Mayhem's own Into the Pandemonium, an album that had perverted and turned inside out the black metal genre as Celtic Frost's [Into the] Pandemonium had done to thrash metal".[1] Alex Henderson of AllMusic stated that the band "has outdone itself with the epic Grand Declaration of War, which could arguably be described as black metal's equivalent of Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime".[2]

A remastered version of the album was released in December 2018; the original 'cold', 'sterile' production was swapped out for a more raw sound with the bass and drums made more prominent in the mix.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]

AllMusic critic Alex Henderson wrote: "Grand Declaration of War won't appeal to anyone with a short attention span, but for those who can sit down and really give this CD their undivided attention, the rewards are great."[2]