Jay Valena Photography

Mayhem and Cattle Decapitation rolled into town on the Blackenedfest tour, one of the most highly anticipated extreme metal shows of the year.

Fortunately I was able to see the tour before all bands except Mayhem quit, which meant I could see Cattle Decapitation perform once again (Marduk’s last-minute cancellation of the tour created money problems for all the bands – therefore, all the openers quit and went home).

Shooting notes: The show was very chaotic in every way, making this a challenging shoot: plenty of strobe lights, copious amounts of stage fog, and a complete lack of front white lighting meant that I had to rely on flash for almost every shot (resulting in many unusable shots due to the fog). Standard “extreme metal concert photography” rules apply: wide open f/2.8 aperture, and a relatively slow shutter speed (1/60 to 1/30). The difficulty of the shoot was made more frustrating by the fact that Mayhem had brought along quite an impressive stage setup – vocalist Attila was dressed to look like a Kandaarian demon from Evil Dead, and stage props included various fake decapitated heads and a huge Mayhem logo that was made to look like it was composed of skin.

Show review: For those interested, this was Mayhem’s setlist:

1. Pagan Fears
2. Ancient Skin
3. From the Dark Past
4. My Death
5. A Time to Die
6. View from Nihil
7. Illuminate Eliminate
8. Anti
9. Freezing Moon
10. Crystallized Pain in Deconstruction
11. Silver Anfang
12. Deathcrush
13. Buried by Time and Dust
14. Carnage
15. De Mysteriis dom Sathanas
16. Pure Fucking Armageddon

Mayhem’s music is a challenging listen, but it still translated well to a live environment – it was easily one of the darkest concerts I’ve ever attended. Rumor has it that the band plans to come back to America before the end of the year, as they will still have working Visas.