Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Wed Nov 30, 2011 1:48 am
The show's venue was changed at the last minute from the Clubhouse, which is a crummy club with a bad sound system (honored by GZA as "the worst system he ever rocked on") within walking distance of ASU, to Club 910 Live, which is a much better joint formerly called Boston's that's about 4 miles from campus. I think that this abrupt change hurt attendance somewhat, but the sound system at 910 is great, and the outdoor stage on the chilly night contributed a lot of frostbitten ambience.
This was an incredible value for a show -- 6 bands including black metal's defining act for $22 (or $18 if you got your ticket direct from a band). Over four hours of pummeling live metal for the price of a case of beer? Yeah, I'll take that. I was amazed at the low turnout -- I estimate 200 or fewer people were there in total, maybe as low as 125. How could the most sensational band in black metal draw such a small crowd? Gotta be some bad combination of poor publicity and venue change, because I know that there are literally dozens of extreme metal fans in Phoenix. One thing I noticed is that most of the crowd looked like 'traditional' heavy metallers -- you know, long hair, baggy clothes, spikes, makeup -- rather than the hipster, quasi-ironic emo-metallers (shorter hair, hats, colors other than black, fashionably tight trousers) that tend to dominate a lot of American black metal shows.
The opening act was locals Phoenix & Dragon, who shreiked through a half-hour set of Iron Maiden-derived power metal. The singer was top-notch, hitting those freaky operatic notes. The guitar players appeared to be very good players, based upon the speed with which their fingers flew across the fretboards during the many harmonized lead passages, but their tones were so saturated with distortion and compression that they were virtually inaudible -- it just sounded like a bunch of buzzing, wheezing wide-band static behind the drum noise. They were using Line 6 amps, and they probably had them set to "sounds great when I'm practicing but I didn't bother to check how it sounds in a band mix." This band wasn't a great genre match for the rest of the acts, being very far from black metal, and I think the crowd didn't give them enough props because of that. I enjoyed their set quite a bit though -- and they get extra points for their blue-jeans-and-white-sneakers 80s garage band attire.
Next up were Tuscon black metallers Chaos Ascending, who paint themselves like Gorgoroth while sounding and acting exactly like Watain. Which suits me fine, I @#$%ing love Watain! They played a set of very engaging Satanic black metal with a healthy dollop of thrash and anthemic rock thrown in. Excellent showmanship and playing from the whole crew, and the singer really made an effort to get the crowd involved with chants of "Hail Chaos! Hail Satan!" BC Rich guitars and Madison heads were the guitar gear of choice, and the bassist played a Steinberger Spirit 5-string. This band gets a big thumbs-up from me.
The LA band Abigail Williams followed with a very enjoyable set of Agalloch-style American blackish nature-metal. When I saw three guitarists and a bass player walk onstage, I was like "oh golly, this looks dire," but in fact, they played and sounded great. They played three epic, shifting songs with plenty of contour and dynamics, and an ambient backing track featured significantly. The lead guy, by the name of Sorceron, got splendid tones from a laser blue RG550 through a Dual Rectifier; the other two guitfiddlers used a white Gibson Flying V through a new white EVH 5150 III and a '90s Japanese Jackson Dinky (stripped to bridge-pickup-only) through another Dual Rec. These were the best guitar sounds of the night, and the whole set was a real treat for me.
Polish blackened thrashy band Hate took the stage next, corpsepainted and mostly shirtless, for an energetic set that got the crowd jumping like it was a Cypress Hill show. These guys had a distinct Children of Bodom flavor with a little Behemoth thrown in for good measure. Some of their songs were pretty much straight-up hardcore thrash metal with shreiked vocals, and the kids ate it up. Musicianship was very good; the guitarists played a Fernandes Rhoads-style axe and a black King V of indeterminate manufacture, through the same amps used in the previous set. A lot of the guitar solos had an actual "rock 'n' roll" blues-based feel, which was in strong contrast to the diatonic shred styles that dominated the rest of the night. The only thing that struck me as less-than-optimal about this band was the drummer, whose time was not all that great and whose occasional one-hit-too-many bass drum rolls were pretty distracting. Funny, because usually, the best musician in any given extreme metal band is the drummer due to the demands of precision placed upon them. That aside though, Hate turned in a good show.
Norse veterans Keep of Kalessin appeared next to deliver a rabble-rousing set of black fantasy metal. There were several diehard Kalessin fans in the audience who enthusiastically growled along with the singer as he relayed tales of dragons and stuff. This cat has some pipes and the melodic vocal parts were done in a very unique half-grunt, half-croon that was real effective. The shaveling drummer was like a machine gun, brilliant with stop-on-a-dime blast beats, bass rolls, and well-placed tom assaults that kept the heads bobbing. The guitarist was playing a fancily-appointed LTD Horizon through one of the Dual Rectifiers and getting a pretty good sound while playing like he was being chased by two malevolent mages or something -- superb musicianship all around in this band, and very good crowd interaction. When they played their last song, a cut from their recent record "Kolossus," the audience went apey.
After the next equipment breakdown / setup, there was a wait of at least a half-hour before Mayhem appeared. The crowd was getting antsy and chanted repeatedly for the band, but no dice. Mayhem's guitar techs fiddled with the guitars and amps a bit, and I checked out what gear was in use. Both guitar amps were Blackstar half-stacks. One guitar was a black-and-red Jackson Rhoads (I believe one of the Japanese models), and the other was a black LTD EC-1000. Hellhammer's bass was an old black Gibson Les Paul Special bass through what looked like an Ampeg 8x10 cabinet. There were a few Boss pedals around, sitting on top of one of the amps, but I couldn't tell what they were from where I stood at the edge of the stage.
Finally, the fog machine started spewing, and the main attraction got underway. Hellhammer strode onstage and sat down at his drum kit to much applause, and then the two guitarists, stand-ins for the murdered Euronymous whose names I don't know, walked on with bassist Necrobutcher, who sported a Mayhem t-shirt to remind everyone of what band they were watching. The crowd was going nuts as the opening riffs of "Deathcrush" sliced through the fog. Soon singer Attilla was visible through the haze. He was, as I'd expected from reading online reviews of their recent shows, most unusually attired. The singer, who'd appeared on the iconic record "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas," wore a red-lined taffetta Dracula cape over a Bathory t-shirt with a creative part-shorn, part-long hairstyle. He'd painted his face white with black curlicues. His microphone was taped to an inverted crucifix, and around his neck was draped a short noose of heavy rope. In his left hand he clutched a sans-mandible human skull, which he held with what appeared to be a cocktail napkin until he later revealed it to be a sash of some kind. Throughout the set, Atilla waved this skull in a spirited manner and used it as a puppet to 'sing' into the microphone.
I had expected that the band would turn in a performance that was at least partially 'phoned in,' due to the fact that they're pretty old and the crowd was so small, plus the venue change hassles. Not so! Mayhem launched into a show that was, in a word, phenomenal. The three originalish members looked pretty good for their ages, and Necrobutcher's showmanship exemplified what I like to see from a rock 'n' roll performance : lots of audience eye contact, moving around to make sure everybody gets to see him, cool rock poses and grimacing. He and Attilla posed together for phone cameras while performing several times, and everybody in the front row stage left -- me included -- got either a high-five or a handshake from Necrobutcher, whose facial experssion clearly communicated the fact that he was pretty darn thrilled with the show, for whatever reason.
To see such a storied, classic band in these close quarters was positively awesome and inspiring. They played plenty of hoary chestnuts like "Funeral Fog," the aforementioned "Deathcrush," and the title cut from "De Mysteriis...," along with some stuff that I didn't recognize that I guess was from their latter-day LP "Ordo et Chao" [sic]. Attila rasped and croaked well through all these tunes, and Hellhammer's performance on the drums was overwhelmingly great. Bludgeoning, powerful, orhestral, and precise, this was one of the best metal drum performances I've ever heard. Too bad they had him stuck way in back so that he was more or less invisible when the fog machine was running. The guitarists performed well, but their tone was really splattery and fizzy, making for a pretty indistinct guitar presentation that also sadly ate into Necrobutcher's great-sounding fuzzed bass. If this is what Blackstar amps sound like, I'm staying the hell away from them. I mean, of course black metal guitars are supposed to sound $#!%ty, but it should be "good $#!%ty" like Euronymous' Les-Paul 'n' Marshall tone on the records, or at least like Darkthrone.
The crowd was immensely excited and galvanized by Mayhem's performance, surging and headbanging furiously, horns aloft, while huffing out the words to songs they knew. The visible glee on Necrobutcher's face made the people rock even harder, and by the time to set was over, both the band and audience had a glow that I could only describe as postcoital.
In sum : a wonderful performance from a worship-inspiring headliner, supported by a grip of excellent opening acts. Rad show.
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