Mayhem & Rotten Sound
2.10.2001 Tavasti Club, Helsinki, Finland
By Luxi L and Arto L
|
The Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem have always
been known for quite a controversial, frightening and above all
shocking reputation for gigs and of course for the non band
activities during their career. Mayhem visited Finland for the first
time a couple of years back, just concentrating on the outrageous
power of the musical delivery, but unfortunately didn't invest
anything on the visual side of which the band is definitely known
for. Mayhem's second visit to Finland had been arranged this time a
little bit better in terms of obscure and grotesque stage shows.
But before the Norwegian black metal legends were allowed to get
on the stage to declare the war of deathcrush, the domestic crust
grind core outfit Rotten Sound opened the night by unleashing
a real grinding terrorizing set and definitely pulverized the
audience. The three red covered guys with the incredible
"machine gun" drummer went through their set with total
extreme aggression. It is obvious Rotten Sound's lyrics don't just
focus on topics of mutilating corpses and mandatory necrophiliac
things like several bands of that genre usually tend to deal with.
Instead, the Rotten guys are also keen on giving a shit and
criticizing especially their old jobs as the singer announced
"this track "Corporate Fuck" is dedicated to my
ex-job Nokia". Rotten Sound is really a welcome choice to the
Finnish current metal map at the moment dominated and excessively
saturated by several ridiculous looking and crap sounding teenage
black metal groups and b-class Stratovarius clones.
As already mentioned earlier about Mayhem's gig having been
arranged a little bit better compared to the first one and to be
honest it truly was more shocking. When getting into the venue from
the bar I was about to drop my camera and drink when seeing the
stage. The whole goddamn stage had got an entire new look, there
were two executed pig heads placed on the top of 1.5, meter high
iron rods and a cow's skull had been put on the top of 2.5 meter
high stand which was again decorated with long barbed wires and
another separate executed pig head had been placed on the stage
nearby the audience. Damn, the stage with these huge above all fresh
looking pig heads looked very bizarre and insane.
|
Rotten Sound
Mayhem
|
The lights were turned down and the expected well-known intro off
from the semi-legendary Deathrcrush mini album started roaring from
the monitors. Unfortunately, the general sound quality was really
awful since the beginning of the gig. It could be seen from
Blasphemer's reactions toward the mixer, showing marks something
gotta be done to improve the sound. Even though they tried to
improve the sound, they failed. But it could be bet the audience
mostly came down to witness their stage show and of course the black
metal legends themselves in action more than listening to the stuff.
But as for the band's and above all Maniac's stage manner and
appearance. Whereas other guys in question - Blasphemer and
Necrobutcher basically concentrated on the playing and doing the
background vocals, instead the frontman, of course having his face
painted entire white, performed the normal self mutilation scene,
being typical of Maniac's stage show on the Mayhem gigs, by slitting
his wrist and arms with a huge knife and screwing barbed wires
around his arms ripping and slitting the skin of the arm resulting
in blood running all around his arms and hands throughout the whole
gig. When the blood had spilt more than enough around he just
cold-bloodedly cleaned the bleeding wounds by pouring the water over
them. Judging by a number of scars in his arms only proves his
earlier slitting and other self mutilation experiences. Of course
one of those pig heads got a small dismembering treatment by
Maniac's huge knife too. The audience followed the course of events
of the stage with a huge interest for obvious reasons.
Although the most recent Mayhem album "Grand Declaration Of
War" was found and said to be a more wimped out crappy
alternative output by several true hard core black metallers, but
having the newer stuff played and mixed on an equal footing with the
old classic material worked very well and fit to the live situation
suitably and definitely sounded very blackish after all. I for one
gotta admit digging more the older stuff especially "Necrolust"
and "Freezing Moon." They are two classic tunes from
Dead's era that sounded great live and also Mayhem are essentially
forced to do plenty of tunes from the first mini album ala Chainsaw
GutsFuck, ignoring the great "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas"
from which only a couple of tunes were played (for instance From The
Dark Past) and the gig was concluded by Pure Fucking Armageddon from
their early demo days.
Seeing Mayhem is definitely a shocking experience for people not
familiar with their image and music. But Mayhem is Mayhem and they
need to maintain the reputation and image of an extreme metal band
since the band was founded to carry out the true philosophy of the
most nihilistic black metal approach and they have succeeded in
doing that.
