repeated and the rhythm was always out or different or kind of twisted, we wanted to go back from there instead of going forward in that direction. Every Mayhem album has a kind of unique aspect, but we wanted to go back to a little bit more traditional extreme metal. Of course, there’s all these elements that Mayhem has built up for itself as a band, but we still wanted to go back to something that was straightforward musically and a little more brutal and more like extreme metal." As with the previous album, the lyrics focus less on the classically Satanic themes of the band's early work, instead referring to occult and conspiracy theory concepts such as psychic powers, mind control and alien tampering with human evolution. (For instance, the song "Corpse of Care" appears to be a direct allusion to Bohemian Grove and the Cremation of Care ceremony performed there.) "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." by J. Robert Oppenheimer serves as the intro for the song Trinity which is also the code name assigned by Oppenheimer for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. Like its predecessor Ordo Ad Chao, the album has some death metal sound and death grunt vocals. The album style has more blackened death metal sound than any of its predecessors. Critical reception Upon its release, Esoteric Warfare received positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 69, which indicates "generally favorable reviews", based on 4 reviews. Pitchfork wrote: "After 30 years, Esoteric Warfare is a Mayhem album worth talking about more for its sounds than its associated baggage." Sputnikmusic staff writer Voivod thought: "Despite being derivative, Esoteric Warfare is worthy of praise, because it keeps alive a sound practised by merely a handful of outfits, some of them sadly disbanded." Nevertheless, Alex Franquelli of PopMatters was more mixed in his assessment of the album, stating: "Mayhem are clearly trying to push the envelope of their metal, but their efforts are rendered vain by the lack of derring-do which has sealed the fate of other fellow second-wave black metallers." Track listing {{Track listing | total_length = 42:15 | title1 = Watchers | length1 = 6:04 | title2 = Psywar | length2 = 3:25 | title3 = Trinity | length3 = 3:57 | title4