[1] On 2 August 2013, the drummer Hellhammer announced on Mayhem's official Facebook page that he was then recording his drum parts for the album.

[2] On 19 February 2014, Mayhem's record label, Season of Mist, announced that the new album's title would be Esoteric Warfare and its release date was to be 6 June 2014.

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.

"[9] 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.

"[13] 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.