Mayhem
w/ Defiled and Manatark
The 13rd of April 2004 Tavastia Club
Helsinki Finland
Review and Pictures by Arto Lehtinen
The legendary Norwegian black metallers, Mayhem, have always had a
strong following in Finland. Previous events have been
packed by enthusiastic black metal freaks to witness the grotesque
show by these true ones. Mayhem's third assault on the soil of
Finland covered three gigs all the way from the south to the north
with the Japanese death metal tornado Defiled and Manatark from
Finland's south neighbor Estonia. Originally, Poland's death metallers
Decapitated was supposed to be involved in the tour, but pulled out for
various reasons and were replaced by Manatark.
Even though the club wasn't even half full, a handful of people
had arrived on time to catch the first opening band in action. The Japanese death mongers kicked the night off by giving
a lesson in
extreme technical death metal. Unfortunately, technical
problems and failures brought some unexpected problems, but the
Japanese death mongers didn't give up that easily and instead whipped
harder and harder. Regrettably, Defiled appeared to be quite unknown
to most of the people as the whole frontline of the stage was more or less
empty. The Defiled front man even jumped to the floor trying to get some
kind of reaction in the half dead audience. As for the set list, well the
Japanese death mongers did a quick dissection by going thru their albums
even from the first one to the latest effort called DIVINATION. People's
reactions were kind of divided as extreme technical death had
appealed to death heads, whereas the ultimate technical parts went
beyond the normal comprehension of other extreme metallers.
Next
was the Estonian Manatark, being a little bit mysterious, but
an interesting dark/black metal combo at least for me. The opening
2-3 tracks appeared to be interesting, but the excessive running time of most of
the other songs more or less
ruined the main interest toward the band's darkish material. The app 35
min set mainly consisted of stuff from their latest output
CHAOS ENGINE. In general the four piece Estonian dark metallers did the needed support role for Mayhem without any big or
outstanding surprises. Frankly seeing Estonian extreme bands in
Finland was definitely welcome and hopefully other Estonian metal will
get the same opportunity as Manatark to spread their material here.
Last
time, Mayhem had several decapitated pig heads all around the stage
and a huge cow's skull placed on the top of a 2.5 meter high stand which
was decorated with long barbed wire...wire that Maniac used to
slit his wrist open several times at the previous show! But this time, all
these heads and skulls were gone and abandoned and the stage looked more
or less normal. It was decorated by obscure looking metallic
pieces of art placed in various places on the stage. The Norwegian
black metal cultists apparently were willing to rely more on their black metallic
Armageddon
approach by doing a set covering
their long career on this long European tour. Besides, I was
eager to switch to a basic performance by leaving these self
mutilation and pig heads behind as
people seem to know and expect these extra show things to be witnessed
on upcoming Mayhem gigs and tours...but Mayhem definitely know how to
surprise people either in a negative or positive way.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to become acquainted with the
new Mayhem opus CHIMERA in order to point out any obvious
differences between the album and live renditions, or to compare it to the older stuff
which is familiar
to my ears. The magnificent DeathCrush definitely crushed...literally. But as far as other older tracks are concerned like Freezing
Moon, Carnage, Pagan Fears they all definitely kicked hard. The older
material without any doubts belongs to the elite class of primitive
black metal with catchy and vicious riffs. The newer
material hasn't reached the same success and constant opinions and
understanding among the black metal purists. But that doesn't bother the
Mayhem guys at all.
Having a second guitarist added in their ranks strengthened their sound.
However, in some ways this seems like an odd choice as Mayhem have mostly relied on one
guitar and Blasphemer is the man with that, even though the hired Gehenna member did a solid job after all. Maniac has calmed down since
his previous visit as not making any extra visual tricks, just
concentrating on handling the vocal duties. Necrobutcher was having
his birthday on the same exact date and acted hyper thru the
whole gig. He also had some extra interaction with the audience, and Blasphemer
did his own job, even though he wasn't much satisfied with the
sound.
HellHammer's machine gun drumming created one hell of a sonic maelstrom
thru the whole set. Besides the death crushing roaring out of the loudspeakers, the audience appeared more restless
and wilder than at previous shows. It is quite obvious that extreme
bands gather extreme people to shows like now when some smartass got the
divine idea to get on the stage to jump around until Maniac
pointed out to a security guy to kick the unwanted jumper off from the
stage. A little later on there was another incident when a couple of guys
had started fighting and finally someone had kept provoking Necrobutcher
through the whole gig until Necrobutcher literally lost it and smashed
his bass to the provoker and kicked direct to the face or head and
screamed to the mic "Kill Him". As a matter of fact, I don't
remember having seen the stage diving on previous Mayhem gigs as
a few didn't land that well even though the No Fun No Mosh and
above all stage diving wouldn't belong to a black metal gig according to
the old Norwegian black metal proverb… Weird..
Mayhem's stage show would have been an extreme shocking
experience for any weak heart concert goers if these special things had
been on the stage. But seeing Mayhem without any of these heads and
so on isn't the most disturbing experience. Instead, it was quite
mellow like a standard extreme metal gig. Mayhem's reputation gained
during these past 20 years doesn't let the band get into the softer direction
by any means, as they are here to carry out the ultimate
nihilistic black metal approach for years to come.
