Photo of Nergal from Behemoth by Zach Johnson
Two weeks ago, St. Louis transformed from being the Gateway to the West into the Gateway to Hell. Four of the most blasphemous death and black metal artists in the known universe—Immolation, Rotting Christ, Deicide, and Behemoth—lay siege to the Pageant for the latest stop in their international tour. The cumulative force of these four of these bands combined—all four legacy artists who provided the very cornerstone of the contemporary extreme metal sound—function as a primer for anyone looking to dive into the extreme metal subculture for the first time, as well as a refresher for any longtime fan of the genre as to what the community is all about.
I was there on assignment with my best friend, Arts STL photographer, musician, and independent filmmaker Zach Johnson, as well as Zach’s eleven-year-old daughter, Nora. An unflappable presence on any reporting team, Nora was clad in a Lil Wayne t-shirt and flippantly told me she didn’t even listen to Lil Wayne when I asked her if she was a fan. Such fierce mental independence was exactly the attitude needed for an elementary school student to survive the sonic slaughter on the horizon. Nora’s mind is not for rent to anybody or anyone—not even Weezy!
After Zach, Nora, and I got our tickets and entered the Pageant, I was immediately struck with the sheer sonic malevolence of Immolation. The red and black stage design, along with their iconic logo, overwhelmed the senses. Immolation’s music is the soundtrack for refined, pure rage at the injustices of the world, and a methodical surgical strike against them. This is perhaps best exemplified through their song “Father, You’re Not a Father,” an iconic death metal cut that explores the extremely taboo subjects of clerical sexual abuse. Immolation is set apart in the extreme metal community through their willingness to turn the greatest horrors of the modern age into art.
It is here that I should confess that this concert coincided with a deliberate effort on my part to quit smoking cigarettes, so as much as I was prepared to be spellbound by Immolation, my nicotine urges kicked in hard once I entered the Pageant so I was drawn to the back patio in order to take some hits of my Foger brand cola slush flavored vape (highly recommended). It was here that I ran into two luminaries of a St. Louis heavy metal community Facebook group, Jared and Chris. This Facebook group has become a source of great strength and community for me ever since I was “initiated” into it on Easter Sunday, when I went to the Pageant to watch Blood Incantation and Emperor and met several members of this new found family. Jared, Chris, and I riffed on an elaborate inside joke involving the plot of a fake movie, Latex, starring Jonah Hill, Johnny Depp, Larry David, Margaret Qualley, and more. (The complex plot of Latex is worthy of its own article in a future writing session.) While outside we attracted two new recruits to the St. Louis metal group: a guy with Aqua Teen Hunger Force tattoos and relentless personal style, and a hip hop fan who declared, correctly, that every self-respecting metalhead owns a copy of Enter the 36 Chambers by the Wu Tang Clan. It was with this legion of scene veterans that I launched into the next act of the evening, the Hellenic black metal legends Rotting Christ. I slipped into “emperor mode” and climbed the stairs of the Pageant up to the balcony for a bird’s eye view.
As a black metal guitarist myself, watching a band like Rotting Christ in action serves as a master class in the demanding technical skills required to play music at such high velocity. The cornerstone of the black metal guitarist’s technical arsenal is the tremolo, a technique in which the guitarist rapidly vibrates a given string to maintain the sense of a single note stretched out in an infinite vortex of sound. This incredibly demanding technique requires the player to stand more or less stock still, creating a feedback loop in their own body in which all remaining kinetic energy is transferred solely to the hand doing the picking, while the hand on the fretboard gently transitions from one fret to the next. What might sound simplistic to the untrained ear is actually a demonstration of the power of economy of motion in effect; the members of this band reduce any and all drag in their posture, keeping the chord progressions as simple as possible to maintain maximum velocity. This results in a hypnotic, repetitive, spell-binding physical stage presence—it truly makes the viewer feel as if they are bearing witness to a forbidden black magic ceremony. I was so impressed with this display of craftsmanship that I promptly reported my findings to the Pageant bar staff as I ordered my second double whiskey and ginger ale for the evening.
After some more riffing and nicotine on the patio, Jared, the alpha of the group that evening, alerted us that Deicide was about to begin. I am eternally grateful to Jared for this warning, as I would not want to have missed one microsecond of Deicide’s set. As one of the founding fathers of American death metal, Deicide is often treated as a legacy act, one that, like KISS or Aerosmith is to American hard rock, is “past its creative prime.” While the internet nerds may maintain that Deicide’s best days as recording artists are behind them, that illusion is completely dispelled when you are face to face with the sheer intensity of their stage presence in a live setting. The members of Deicide are not human beings like you and I—they are living statues. They stand stock still, creating the most unholy, hateful, aggressive, blasphemous music my ears have ever bore witness to. Glenn Benton, the frontman notorious for his stage antics at the height of the “Satanic Panic” of the 1990s, is an absolutely terrifying stage presence, uttering obscene, inhuman vocalizations with the slightest motion of his mouth. Witnessing Deicide is truly like watching a mass scale exorcism, with Glenn Benton and colleagues absorbing the collective unholy energy of St. Louis (which, after all, is where the most famous exorcism in U.S. history took place) and channeling it outward into a wall of pure sound. Most mind-blowing of all was while all this was taking place, Nora, our honorary junior reporter, was calmly playing Roblox with her earplugs in, completely unfazed by the stage presence of a man who once threatened to publicly commit suicide on stage as an act of devotion to Satan. Nora’s focus is exactly the kind of demonstration that proves to me the next generation of children are well-prepared for the chaos of the decades to come!
Witnessing the sheer intensity of Deicide was a deeply cathartic experience and I felt my energy flagging as the long evening of four high intensity bands began to wear on me. I caught the first half of Behemoth’s set and found that they more than exceeded my expectations. As a devoted fan of their discography ever since I first asked my high school death metal expert Nick Clarice to burn a copy of Demigod for me on CD, I knew Behemoth had long transcended past the sheer technical brutality of their early days into becoming a transcendent spiritual force. As longtime Behemoth fans all know, their frontman, Adam Darski (stage name: Nergal), is a survivor of leukemia. Their 2014 magnum opus The Satanist is an audio document of Nergal’s recovery from cancer through his unflagging devotion to Satanism. Nergal believed that Satan wanted him to take his recovery into his own hands, and that is exactly what he did. He found his own bone marrow donor, survived the operation, and came back even stronger mentally and physically than he ever was before. Watching this man perform on stage as the grand hierophant of the Satanic Church, he is a living testimony of what can be achieved in one’s life through sheer willpower and determination. Cheers to Behemoth, and to anyone that has faced the demon of cancer head on and lived to tell the tale.
After such an intense evening of performances, I decided to unwind after the show with a BLT, kettle chips, and an ice-cold glass of water at Pinup Bowl, my go-to refueling station after an intense evening at the Pageant. Still vibrating with the “Satanic courage” I saw on display that night, I made one last trip back to the Pageant to thank the staff for their hard work that evening. They reminded me of the many great upcoming shows there this season, not least of which will be Between the Buried and Me and May 28th. Catch me there in “emperor mode” with another double whiskey and ginger ale in hand, and I might tell you the full plot of Latex! | David von Nordheim
