REVIEW BY LUKE CHAPMAN / PHOTOS BY SHELLEY TE HAARA
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After grinding my face along the concrete in an e-scooter mishap, and having to walk to work down Queen Street, I had never felt more welcome with a giant gaping wound on my head than at Friday night’s Behemoth concert, as part of their “Fury Upon the Earth” tour kicking off in Auckland, and featuring punk-fuelled dark synth duo Undiscovered Moons of Saturn and dark metal band Sciolism as opening acts.
The stares turned from confused to almost appreciative as soon as I entered the Powerstation. The more niche the music, the cooler the crowd, my mate told me in the car on the way there. Perhaps he’s right – because the extreme metal fans I met during the night were very wholesome and welcoming indeed, in stark contrast to their demonic imagery – it’s almost like Yin and Yang. What a night awaited us all, a far more personal and engaging experience than another artists’ Spark Arena concert I had gone to only days prior. There was no comparison, I was soon to find.
Behemoth, hailing from Poland, revel in bible-shredding blasphemy, and have spearheaded the Polish extreme metal scene for over 30 years. They have a cult following in Aotearoa and the wider world. Each of the 3 bands presenting at the Powerstation that night were of a consistent set – their blood-curdling, thumping tunes display themes of occultism, demonism, mysticism, pagan folklore, and a questioning attitude of anything enforced by society’s mainstream expectations, expressed through chanting, growling and that classic Screamo sound.
While I originally thought I wasn’t an obvious fan of more extreme metal, that mindset didn’t matter to me by the end and seems trivial in retrospect. The pulse-pounding energy made me forget anything around me (including the pain in my face), as I was intoxicated by the performances of the bandmates, and the passion of the dedicated crowd. You couldn’t help but be a part of it.
But that intensity only grew slowly.
The crowds filed in, and the vibe was chill at first. The merch was popular, a queue of people in black stretched from one horizontal end of the Powerstation to the other. My mate grabbed a band shirt for $60 and immediately donned it. I knew that the low, blue lighting and smoke that emanated from the stage would create an ominous stage presence for anyone up there. The Powerstation has so many nooks and crannies that it’s cool to just be there, even without music on the stage. There was nothing about the laid-back mood to suggest that in a couple of hours, a mosh pit of almighty proportions was to break free of its social restraint and find a home in the crowd.
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As I found a comfortable spot on an upstairs balcony, Undiscovered Moons of Saturn, a two-person, local, dark mystery ambience group with a unique sound I wasn’t sure I’d heard before, started out the night with a hazy, spacy and dark concoction of synth-focused ambience. The deep power of their chanting during these synth tracks had this epic, timeless, medieval feel that felt brutal and beautiful all at once. The music felt more like one long track than separate songs, but I suppose that’s the point. Their discography is filled with astronomical names, and each tune flowed into the next, giving a smoothed-out, heady feeling that was easy to get lost in.
I was unfamiliar with dark synth, but it set the mood perfectly. It would make for great dark meditation music, if that’s a thing. The ambience induced a sort of trance in the audience, who often seemed to be watching the ever-changing red, orange, blue, green stage with awe. Towards the end of their set, they began rhythmically chanting dark latin proverbs and holding high the skull of a goat – this imagery, mixed with the lighting, was an eerie and effective communication of the message of the night and a sign of things to come. The light show was only getting started too, and is a part of the experience; it was timed with the beat changes and music flow and had a very trippy effect. But some of the crowd seemed to be waiting in anticipation for something to get the blood pumping.
Sciolism met that anticipation. Far from a warm up for the main act, Sciolism, met the demands of the fans and delivered their own assemblage of dark metal tracks, and it was a sign of things to come. It was quite an intense change, to go from dark-synth music to full-fledged metal, but it felt so consistent, like the structure of a film, that it was only ever a good thing. Sciolism delivered pure energy, which the crowd bounced back right back. They’re an Auckland-based black metal group who were probably huge Behemoth fans themselves.
It was during their second song that the mosh formed, the ultimate badge of honour for a death metal band. This was the awaited moment – fans tore into each other and the sweat and blood started flowing. It’s a sight to see (I wasn’t going anywhere near it with my face): people smashing, shoving, pushing and quite literally sprinting into each other. But somehow, no real fighting or arrogance develops; just love and friendship. I have to stress that. The second someone drops, about 12 arms appear and reach down to hoist the person back up. There’s real comradery and respect flowing among Behemoth’s fans and it taught me that mosh pits are actually friendlier than Auckland roads, despite appearances.
The majority of people were further back, at the bar, or in the upstairs viewing area – the mosh is reserved for the more serious metalheads, who feed off the music like electricity. Sciolism jammed the night away, and were gone too soon, but the ever-increasing pace of the music had the crowd bobbing their heads far back from the mosh and all the way upstairs, and screaming and hollering their approval.
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.The stage had been set for Behemoth’s arrival, and they went no holds barred on their theatrical arrival. The build-up to their first track, “Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer”, was that of the gods. Slowly, Nergal and his bandmates, garbed in demonic face paint and hoods reminiscent of medieval druids and depictions of the Grim Reaper, emerged from the smoky darkness behind the stage. It was like watching a play as much as a band perform. They enchanted and knowingly teased their audience with hints of their favourites, but actually paid it off too.
The fans were salivating for the first verse – and then it came, and the holy symbiosis was complete – the band and the fans bouncing off each other to form a heavenly (or in this case, hellish) atmosphere of musical adrenaline and intense, hammering and ear-splitting power. My mate eagerly disappeared into the mosh, to re-emerge an hour and a half later with blood on his shoes and in his hair – sprayed from the band or from a mosh-mate, no one will ever know.
Frontman Nergal is a true showman in every sense of the word. It was physically difficult to pry my eyes away from him, his every movement coordinated, rhythmic and powerful in its punches. He slayed the air with his fist to the rhythm of a beat. His voice was amazing. He was in complete control of the night, and the fans fell headfirst under his spell. Every few songs, he would speak to his fans, telling them it’s been too long since their last NZ tour, and that they wouldn’t be anywhere without them.
From my high vantage point, I could see down into the control booth, and noticed that the mixer seemed to be moving his fingers to the rhythm of Behemoth’s beats. At first I thought he was drumming his fingers, but quickly realised that he was controlling the lights manually. This felt like a special treat, I was the only person watching it – this guy was a wizard, and was turning the lights up and down, switching colours and doing fancy light displays so fast it and so perfectly synced with the music that it was hard to believe anyone could have that amount of training, and it gave me an extra burst of appreciation for the effort people put in to make the show a spectacle.
An encore was demanded, and given – and by the end of the show, fans were in an appreciative frenzy of sweat and saliva. Blood and guts seems to be a marker of integrity with death metal crowds, and I was there for it. It was the ultimate punk element, and by the end of the show, there were mosh pit members bloodier than me, standing together in brotherhood by the door as we all filed out, saying they’d do it all again right now if they could. It’s all about raw, unfiltered feeling with this crowd.
But the people wearing the darkest clothing seem to have the lightest souls. They seek pleasure from pain, and preach despair but feel love and passion. It’s an epic thing to be amongst, I thought as I went downstairs, and it taught me that what the outside implies is sometimes the opposite of what’s on the inside. Death metal fans are driven by the edge, by the spark of rebellion against oppression, and by the call-to-action that the music promises. You’re supposed to feel something burning inside you at concerts like this. I sure felt the fire, and it kept me warm as I departed into the windy night.
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