The lineup for this evening was, originally, the mighty Inquisition, Italian black/death occultists Mortuary Drape, and homegrown horror show Negative Plane. Total blight, total death, total support from the underground hordes (both forum-dwelling and ticket-buying). Unfortunately, due to bungled travel arrangements (lookin’ at you, Rites of Darkness fest) and Negative Plane’s decision to bow out, sometime over the past couple months tonight’s ritual metamorphosed into an entirely different beast. Thankfully, the minds behind this event (BBQ Booking, comprised of several members of Natur and Electric Assault Records – the folks that brought you Pilgrim’s soon-to-be-classic Forsaken Man tape) pulled together a more than worthy replacement bill, featuring NJ pillars of death Disma and NYC black metal horde Agrath (who count Negative Plane’s D.G. amongst their ranks).
Walking down into the sublevel venue, our senses were immediately under attack. The whole room smelt of smoke and black leather, and the attendees seethed in a monochromatic mass. The joint was packed, almost uncomfortably so, and fighting our way to the front was a formidable endeavor. It was worth it, though, to get close enough to see the sweat pouring down Craig Pillard’s furrowed brow and watch his eyes roll back in his head, hands splayed, as he tore guttural growl after guttural growl from his wretched vocal chords. The riffs came hard, thick, and heavy, bubbling up from the primeval ooze. Bathed in red light, faces contorted in concentration, long hair dripping — Disma looked like a cadre of cavemen, wielding their instruments with heavy-handed precision, hammering out primitive odes to dead gods. The sound, atmosphere, and performance was everything we could have asked for. While Disma’s set felt far too short, they made one hell of an impact.
Inquisition’s inimitable interpretation of that which we call black metal is an acquired taste to be sure, but once they draw you into their cult, there is no turning back. With The Studio packed to the gills with wild-eyed fanatics and curious newcomers, the burning anticipation for their set was palpable until finally, they appeared.
With more than 20 years of blasphemy under their bullet belts, it’s no surprise that the duo seemed perfectly fluid, locked in, and in sync with one another onstage. Inquisition are a well-oiled machine, kept slick with the blood of sacrifice. Dagon’s vocals, often mocked by the uninformed for their “robotic” or “froggy” qualities on record, come across in a much more organic, hypnotic fashion when witnessed live, and tonight was no exception. Drawing from earlier releases as well as from 2011’s triumphant Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm, the two men onstage paid tribute to Lucifer with every breath and every beat. Punters crowded up against the stage, inches from Dagon’s boots. Across the venue, hair flew, beers were knocked out of slippery hands, feral cries of joy sounded.
That night, New York belonged to Inquisition. Ave Satanas.
. . .
Photos by Greg Cristman. Click here to see more of his photos at his site.
Inquisition is playing here on Tuesday. Fuck yes.
Crush the Jewish Proph.
also, lol@pix of dagon drinking bottled water. so grim.
I guess a “Jewish Proph” gave him a bad grade at some point.
@D.M. Nazguul:
What you can’t tell from the picture is that the water he’s drinking came from a well that an unbaptized baby drowned in. Thus, it’s very grim.
Wow. Being the only person in front of the drummer, that must be tough! I also think someone should’ve got rid of half of these pictures and only kept the best ones for the blog. Now there was a lot of similar shots and that’s just boring.
Inquisition were in Raleigh last night and played with local hardcore Godz, Double-Negative. Everyone that went was going completely apeshit online, via email and Facebook, afterward. A very good time was had by all, excluding my crooked, ailing old-man-back self.
@Carm: We need to start going to shows together!
Although, I hate Reggies…
Yes, we definitely should!
I’m also going to be at the Psychic TV show at Reggie’s on Sunday, hope to see you there!
I felt like my heavy, heaving heart was being touched by the creative, but cretinous christ while reading this lively live report. (I’m lookin at you, Kim Kelly.)
Are you being facetious or what?
Naw. I’m being alliterative.
I got photos and video from last night’s sports pub show by Inquisition here in Raleigh. Not sure yet if the video came out — the only lighting was from neon beer signs. Honest to God the weirdest and best show I’ve seen in a long time.
Oh, and this photo (not by me) pretty much sums up the experience: http://twitter.com/#!/BryanCReed/media/slideshow?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftwitpic.com%2F7pax1j
That sounds like it was a pretty sick show! The bassist from Disma is totally wearing his own band’s shirt, serious fashion faux pas!
I kinda love it when bands do that. I feel like it used to be okay in the ’80s, until the hammer of fashion came crashing down and metal dudes grew fearful of being ‘that guy’. More people should embrace being ‘that guy’, like this guy.
I have my old band’s logo as a backpatch on my battlejacket; shameless self-promotion ist krieg
All of Taake wear Taake t-shirts. All of them. I think it’s sweet. :3
And then there are people like the Kampfar vocalist who have their band’s logo tattooed on them! Does that count?!
Shameless self promotion is totally underrated. I mean if you are in a band and proud of your work, why not? I think more bands need to all wear their own shirts on stage; I know there are some others who do this but I can’t remember who. As for the Disma guy, there always might be the chance that he spilled something on this normal shirt and this was the only one he could find before the show.
Damn, that looks like an awesome fucking show. Was Inquisition able to bring the heavy without a live bassist?
There’s really something to be said for a straightforward, three band show, especially when there’s some variation in style. This lineup sounds perfect. Last night’s Mournful Congregation gig had 6 fucking bands (M.C. are touring with Anhedonist and Aldebaran, plus 3 local openers), almost all of them sloooooow as shit. I’m realizing I have a definite threshold for seeing too much of any one style in a given night without any variety. MC were killer as was Anhedonist, but there was just too much of the same from the other bands.
Wash, I attended this performance, too, and FWIW the two things that I found most surprising were:
1. Inquisition MORE THAN brought the heavy sans bassist. Along with being clean and tight, the sound was like stadium-ready massive and didn’t betray the absence of any instruments.
2. As Kim points out, Dagon’s voice (which I find especially off-putting on Inquisition’s albums) has an entirely different, more appropriate and more appealing sound in the live arena. I wonder if that frog croak is an aesthetic choice or just the result of crummy vocal recording, because he sounds SO MUCH better live (to my ear anyway).
I was really impressed by Dagon’s guitar tone too. Dunno if y’all saw, but he had three rigs set up onstage. You can get an awful lot of sound out of one guitar if you’re willing to spend enough dough.
And regarding the vocals: I found that my location in the venue made a huge difference. When I was standing off to the side by the bar, Dagon’s voice took on a grittier, more appealing tone. When I stood in the middle of the room, his voice returned to its more familiar frog-bot quality.
Doug, Dagon did not have three rigs set up — only two but I’m not telling what he did
Makes sense he’d have more than one amp going, that’s pretty cool. My buddy’s old band originally had two guitarists, but after they stripped down to one that was what he wound up doing too: using two differently voiced but complimentary amps to bring the thunder. He had an amp-switching pedal (tonebone or some such) so when he’d be playing clean parts he could thin the tone out by using only one amp at a time. When it was time to kick it up he’d switch from the single clean amp to two distorted amps, bringing a massive volume boost along with the distortion. Used to sound pretty rad.
Dagon used 2 loaner heads and 2 loaner cabs, and he blew out one of the heads, which was a Krank. It’s fucking nuts how he was able to maintain that tone while flexing his legs during his power stance poses.
“Crush the Jewish prophet, death to Christian faith”
WTF? Am I the only one who finds IO giving more coverage to bands using hate speech problematic to say the least?
Would you still be offended if the word “jewish” wasn’t in there? I’m pretty sure they’re using it in reference to judaism, not in the racist/anti-semitic sense. As soon as you remove the offending word it’s no more harsh than anything by Deicide.
Such an incredible show. My review is over here.
Nice pics and write up. Sad I missed this.
@NuttyProfessor – Jesus was Jewish, that isn’t hate speech, that’s a statement.
Nice try, but I’m not buying it. The guy (Kramer) who does the covers for these assholes albums and runs Satanic Skinhead Propaganda is also a fucking racist scumbag: http://www.satanichatefulwarskin.com
I’m sure it’s all just “historically accurate” and “pure coincidence” in your world though.
Oh, hey, music that deals in negative things (war, hate, darkness, evil, blight, etc.) sometimes deals in beliefs and aesthetics that people find unpleasant or unacceptable. Imagine that.
I mean, no, I wouldn’t buy stuff from this dude – not because I’d be afraid that I’m funding groups whose beliefs and aims I find repugnant, but because his entire site screams “I’m a pretentious twerp.” If I rolled my eyes any more while looking through his catalog, I’d be looking at my own eye sockets right now.
Could they have gotten by without specifically saying “the Jewish prophet”? Probably. They aren’t wrong, but it’s not strictly necessary. Is it worthy all the pearl-clutching over “hate speech” among every other single ugly, horrible thing associated with metal? I don’t think so. Better to work against groups like the National Front or the Minutemen or the KKK or W.A.R. or the Hammerskin Nation than to get all hot and bothered because some dude in makeup said “ggrrr Jewish prophet” and some ineffectual little creep with a strong sense of inadequacy and need for validation did their cover art.
It’s great that, you know, everyone is cool with murdering Full Metal Attorney’s God as long as it’s not a “hatecrime,” btw.
Disgusting.
How do you murder an intangible entity responsible for all creation? You’re treating this like God is the victim of bullying and you’re worried we’re going to beat him to death.
Honestly I could care less who or what other people choose to worship, but singling out metal bands for hating on Christianity is the definition of futility. These guys are supposed to be Satanists — which, after all, is the defining characteristic of black metal, no matter what people say about the genre these days — and this is in line with the tenets of their ‘religion’. Would you get upset because a Christian band sings about hating on Satan?
Is Altar of Plagues a satanist band? That’s a kooky definition of BM you’ve got there. A bit too whimsical for these dark times.
They certainly aren’t, but their individual beliefs fall far afield of organized religion and the like and more towards animism, paganism, etc.
As “whimsical” as it may seem, I do agree with what Wash is saying.
Traditional black metal was originally all about being Satanic, or at least about presenting the most Satanic image whether you actually believed in any of it or not. Hence the adolescent one-upmanship of the church burnings and murders in the early days.
BM has certainly moved away from that in modern times, but that IS what the genre was founded on. Inquisition as a band are just sticking to the original philosophy of the genre, for better or worse.
I’m with Wash Jones, in that I tend to read this kind of stuff as “adolescent one-upsmanship.” That’s also my take on stuff like “Fucked By a Knife” or Autopsy’s “Dirty Gore Whore” (which someone brought up in the thread about hate and extreme metal). Hard to take any of that seriously, though I suppose there are some hateful idiots out there who do.
Oh, Okay. Well, I didn’t realize BM could mean all these different things. I guess that’s why something like Locrian, which doesn’t sound at all like BM to me, gets called BM. Urban blight BM, right? In the end, it all seems rather problematic. A little too “big tent” for a genre allegedly, at least according to “Wash Jones,” “all about being Satanic.”
Thank you both for your thoughtful and cogent replies. Very eye opening indeed.
@NuttyProf – sooo let me get this straight, just because the dude that paints their covers runs SSP (yes I’m familiar) and they refer to Christ as Jewish (which is true, provided you believe in Christ’s existence), they’re automatically NSBM? I reckon it’s easy to see NSBM in there if that’s what you’re looking for. Enjoy your witch hunt.
I know your type, THKD. You’re the kind of passive “well, he was always nice to me” type of fellow that prefers to look the other way rather than stand up to the type of bullshit that continually plagues heavy metal. Just LOOK at how the writers of this website often euphemistically refer to Graveland and others as “xenophobic” or “nationalistic” rather than plainly calling them what they are. I’m half-expecting one of them to be characterized as being merely “patriotic” next. As a half Jew/Armenian, I’m seeing red just re-reading your post and how ignorant you appear to be. Do you really NOT see how this is offensive and so far below the standards which Cosmo set for this once wonderful website?
For what it’s worth (and not that anyone asked), I can see both sides here. On the one hand, the use of “Jewish” in this song title seems like it’s there to provoke just this sort of reaction (see also the Meads of Asphodel’s _Murder of Jesus the Jew_). Sure, Jesus (if you believe he existed) was Jewish, but why refer to him as such unless you’re trying to emphasize his “Jewishness”?
On the other hand, maybe I’m being naive, but I can’t imagine too many readers of this site take the politics or theology of BM bands very seriously. And even if we were to take it seriously, it seems like there’s a difference between Inquisition’s generic anti-Judeo Christian rhetoric (which seems par for the course in a lot of BM) and the flaming swastikas and whatnot that adorn the record sleeves of other bands on Antichrist Kramer’s label.
Also, it seems worth noting here that Cosmo posted about Inquisition at least a couple of times when he ran this site (and also Vasaeleth, who have a release on Satanic Skinhead Propaganda as well). Hell, he interviewed Burzum, and he didn’t ask any tough questions (or any questions at all, if I remember correctly) about Varg V’s avowed anti-semitic and racist beliefs. In other words, the claim that IO has degenerated in Cosmo’s absence into some sort of Nazi circle jerk isn’t entirely accurate.
@NuttyProf – alright dude, you win. I haven’t the time or inclination to argue w/ trolls which what I’m guessing this is. I will say that Kramer/SSP can’t be all that racist, considering both members of Inquisition are Columbian immigrants, if I’m not mistaken.
I think Colombians or Chileans can be as racist as anyone else. Does racism just disappear once you move out of a predominantly ‘white’ country?
I believe they are europeans who lived in Columbia.
you believe wrong.
That’s How Kids Die.
But I’m not sure even that would work because I get the feeling that Caller Of The Storms doesn’t mind hanging out with nazis 
Posted December 6, 2011 at 3:57 PM
@NuttyProf – …I will say that Kramer/SSP can’t be all that racist, considering both members of Inquisition are Columbian immigrants, if I’m not mistaken.
—
There are lots of Whites in Columbia and Dagon is half american anyways, from what Incubus (who’s american) told me so Inquisition being “brown latinos” doesn’t work
If you wanted to “prove” that Kramer/SSP wasn’t a racist, you’d point out that he’s buddies with Blasphemy, a band that has a full blooded black member
I don’t know if Kramer is racist. He probably is but I think his main thing is antisemitism. I’say that’s what all the SPP bands have in common. Is Inquisition racist ? Don’t know but they didn’t have a problem hanging out with me after a show and I am a black guy ( plain black, not biracial etc). Then again, I’m the kind of person who could go up to a racist and have a conversation with them, provided they’re civilized, have no intention of harming me and have something interesting to say.
To the blog curators :
?
You knew this would happen, right
That song title doesn’t bother me. Doesn’t bother me one bit at all.
But you seem to have a small but vocal following of antiracists/sociology students/women’s studies students/occupy *insert locale* types/snarky cranky queer anarchists/postcolonial theory/critical theory types following this blog. They’re easily offended. If they had their way they’d turn this blog into racialicious for metalheads or somethng like that. So please keep in mind the progressive stack from now on and make sure you make Invisible Oranges a Safe Space for MOC ( metalheads of color, which funnily enough includes jews, armenians, blue eyed lebanese, blond cubans and other assorted “colored” people along with the usual black, mexican etc).
Well, looks like I stand corrected, I was under the impression that both were Columbian. I was clearly misinformed and should have done more research before I spoke on that point.
smiley overload..sorry!
:p
:X
Just testing all the smileys available! :p
Would’ve killed to have seen this show. Oh, well. We just had Impetuous Ritual in L.A. My review is up for those interested.
Three completely irrelevant notes:
1. Inquisition and Disma rule.
2. The guitarist from Agrath plays the guitar type I use the most often. Only Epiphone SGs are real.
3. In the Disma picture where the guitarist is talking into the microphone, I thought at first he was playing the harmonica. Now THAT is something I’d pay to witness…
Regarding the “controversy” in these here replies, I’ve never seen anything close to any racist/hate speech philosophy espoused on this website; in fact, I’d say there are more people here that take personalities like Burzum or Watain to task for their stupid comments than anything else, myself included. Fuck racists, dude, but pick a bigger battle than fighting comment wars. I don’t know about the guy who did Inq’s artwork, but that fact has nothing to do with the thrust of the article which is a live review. I also, like pseudonymous, don’t buy the claim that Satanism is a defining characteristic of BM at all. If anything, it’s more an anti-Christian pagan philosophy than some confusing and overreaching modern term like Satanism. Add to that the fact that most BM bands come off as extremely disingenuous at best and humorlessly cartoonish at worst. And what little BM I listen to these days, is feeling-free–I hardly pay attention to the message, artwork or miscellaneous crap that too often obscures the music. I suspect I’m not the only one. You can’t take this shit serious.
It’s really just semantics so I won’t belabor the point beyond this one last post, but Satanism really was what initially defined black metal bands as “Black Metal” rather than thrash, death, or just heavy metal. It’s just been *mostly* cast aside — modern black metal has really just co-opted the sound and left behind the baggage. I know it’s not a quotable source for research papers, but Wikipedia has a little subheading on the Black Metal page that falls in line with the story pretty much exactly how I’ve always understood it (and there are plenty of references cited).
Even when they weren’t practicing Satanists (and most of the early bands weren’t), they all pretended to be, because Satan was the key selling point back then. While so many of the first wave bands were about shock (like Venom), when Euronymous was steering the second wave they became more aggressively Satanic to the point where they worshipped Satan as an actual deity (Theistic Satanism), which goes against the more common beliefs taken from the Satanic Bible and LaVey’s teachings. So make of that what you will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_metal#Satanism
Last morsel: the paganism you mention came in later, as a refinement to the ideology. Satan was starting to sound pretty silly, so the kids moved on to pagan pastures.
Some moved into orthodox devil worship.
Not my cup of tea but it’s always seemed more serious than the incredibly juvenile LaVeyan stuff.
Deathspell Omega may ultimately be mistaken (since theology is really a waste of one’s mental powers), but they seem to be very learned and erudite.
Last time I checked, skinheads are originally comprised of working class men and women who harbor no racist ideologies, so Blasphemy calling themselves “Satanic Skinheads” refers to that working class background. Hell, I even own a shirt that says that.
Ha! If I saw you wearing that shirt at a show, we’d probably have a fisfight, then post some asinine comments somewhere on this site relaying the experience under our pseudonyms.
It begins and ends with:
“Yeah, cool story, bro”.
It’s amazing how little average folks understand about skinhead culture. Back in Boston I knew a ton of those kids, and the large majority were SHARPs (skinheads against racial prejudice) or similar minded. The sad part is that a few racists do inevitably turn up at skinhead shows, and they continue to tarnish that whole scene from the fringe with their stupidity.
I’d like to correct something i said above about Blasphemy. I hinted that they might not have a problem hanging out with nazis. The reason i thought they might have no problem is that I’ve seen pix of them wearing the SPP shirts and hanging out with the SPP guy. On the other hands, info on other forums and from interviews hint that they’re probably apolitical about the whole race issue ( ie they don’t care one way or the other). However, I doubt that Der Sturmer wear satanic skinhead shirts just as a working class signifier ! heheh
They’re too busy sleeping in the couch and drinking Budweiser.
The Blasphemy dudes are pretty much ambivalent about all of it.