I went to a great gig last friday night. My first Black Metal gig ever (not counting Abigail Williams here).
It was terrific. Opener band was pretty cool. The band is named Putamen Insula. They had a pretty good flow and nice variety in their tracks and riffs. But I must say I was kind of scared when I first got into the venue... Black Metal fans are kind of unsymphatetic and they all wear these military boots and dress in all black. Not that I'm not used to the metal community... but bm community is... different...
And it really didn't help me when I saw the vocalist/guitarist of the first band hit himself repeatedly in the face with a beer bottle until he started to bleed. It really got me wondering if Black Metal really was a freak scene and that all the time I had spent in my life trying to convince me that BM wasn't just about burning, raping and killing people or church burning and racism... would have been a big lie I would have made up for myself.
Then the second band came in... Blackscorn it was named. Pathetic wannabe Mayhem band... with all the corpsepaint, dead animal's skulls on stage and Mayhem worshipping corpsepaint and clothes. Then they started playing. After one second or two I stuffed my ear plugs up my ears. Their sound was fucking terrible. The guitars over-powered everything else and made my ears bleed. There really wasn't anything good to listen to anyway. Just plain boring tremolo picking at the same exact pace through their whole set.
Then... THEN came the great band Chasse-Galerie. This band was absolutely fantastic on stage. Their music is exactly what you expect from a good and innovative black metal band. They mixed their music with some folk elements and showed how well they handled their instruments. I suggest you people listen to them, they are fantastic!
Next in line was... omfg... Infernal Stronghold. Holy mother of God! Their set was fucking BRUTAL, FAST-PACED, MIND-BLOWING and EAR-SHATTERING (but in a good way this time). Crust-Punk/Black Metal at his fucking best. I was right in front of the stage for their whole set. People started a pit as soon as they started to play. I kept getting people bumping into me, but man! I didn't give a fuck! I was right in front of the guitarist/vocalist for the whole set and I headbanged all the way through... except when I jumped on stage and jumped back in the pit. There were also a few girls in the pit... Damn! I don't know what was wrong with these girls because this pit was brutal as fuck. One of them fell hard on the floor and had a guy falling on her. When she got back up she just moved a little aside from the pit, she looked hurt and one guy tried to help her out. But she didn't move away enough from the pit and got hit another time. She fell down and made an attempt to stay up by holding on the stage monitor and dragged it down with her... Another girl pulled up the monitor to place it back up. Damn, I'm pretty sure the girl who fell down was also drunk as fuck. Probably was fucking tough to get up next morning.
During the night, I heard rumors that Forteresse cancelled their set. I was uber-pissed because they are the band who got me to go to that gig at first. Rumors said that they were forced to cancel because some people pressured the organizers to kick them out of the event... supposedly because the vocalist was a Nazi. Forteresse is a nationalist band, but that doesn't make them nazis. Anyway. At some part of the show, between two sets, they started playing a track by Forteresse in the speakers and the crowd started chanting their name. After a while... some of the guys from Forteresse got on stage and decided to play anyway :) From what I understand, not all musicians from the band were on stage. I know the vocalist wasn't there, so it's Chasse-Galerie's vocalist who did the vox. I know it wasn't ALL Forteresse on stage, but their set was still fucking fantastic. Especially when they closed their set with Une Nuit Pour La Patrie.
Next band on stage was Glorior Belli. I watched their whole set from the balcony. I was getting tired, my ears were buzzing already and I didn't feel like getting bumped into all the time anymore. Glorior Belli, while they are labelled as a Black Metal act on Metal Archives... are heavily influenced by slower music like Doom Metal. If there is one band I really wasn't expecting anything from... it was them. But they kicked asses! Big time! They are a fascinating band. Great musicianship in that band, really :)
And then... nothing... Inquisition was next, but I really didn't mind. I was fucking tired. The show started more than an hour late, the show already lasted something like 3 hours and I really didn't feel like going through another "pure" black metal act. They are a good band, definitely, but at that moment, I really didn't give two cents of a shit. Went back home, got some sleep, and next day... I was sick... my ears were buzzing... and I could hear frequencies I never heard before :P
That was a great show :) I really suggest you guys give a listen to Forteresse, Chasse-Galerie, Glorior Belli and Infernal Stronghold. ALL were amazing that night, and ALL sound great on record, two.
