Inquisition and Mayhem: a two-night black metal odyssey
Death came to town in a whirlwind of blast beats and searing metal riffs
- Chad Radford
- Incubus of Inquisition extolling the dark lord.
More photos from the Inquisition show Like two macabre ships passing in the night, Inquisition laid waste to Archive Gallery Wednesday, December 7, while the legendary Mayhem brought its grandiose roar to The Masquerade Thurs., Dec. 8, for a two-night black metal odyssey. Despite their genre-defining connections, both bands’ respectively wicked snarls couldn’t have sounded farther apart. Still, head-bangers turned out in droves both nights to raise their devil horns and revel in screeching vocals, and break-neck blast beats that shook the earth.
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Making their way across the country playing songs from their latest offering, Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm, Inquisition made a last minute detour to Atlanta for a show of cosmic demonic fury. Singer/guitarist Dagon, a Colombian import who calls Washington State home, and drummer Incubus, slithered onto the stage in serpentine corpse paint after local brothers in darkness Abyssus and Disfigurement opened the show.
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If there’s one thing to be said about metal audiences it’s that they are a dedicated bunch. With only a few days notice via local metal message boards and blogs, 60+ black-clad long-hairs (and some shaved heads too) turned up at the converted warehouse on the edge of the Bluff with $10 bills in hand.
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Slathered in morbid makeup, Abyssus unleashed a wall of raw malevolence as they stood shrouded in darkness, and backlit by a blaring blood-red spotlight. Each of the group’s rapid-fire assaults smashed into the next with scathing force, and while the intricacies of the music were never lost in the volume, they were ultimately consumed by the natural distortions of a loud young band playing its guts out in what is ostensibly a concrete room.