Live Report: Mayhem at Gramercy Theatre
Mayhem headlined the Metal Suckfest Pre-Game at the Gramercy Theatre on November 3, the second date of a lengthy string of tour dates in North America with Hate, Keep of Kalessin, Abigail Williams, and Woe. If you find that lineup a bit weird, so did I.
A Mayhem concert today is a difficult thing to wrap your head around. The events of the early Norwegian black metal scene when Mayhem was at its prime are now a distant memory, made into a lurid spectacle by the media at the time and more recently the subject of fascination by a new generation introduced to the scene and events of the early ’90s by documentaries, coffee table art books, and maybe music. The fact that the band has a number of new additions in its lineup and is now a watered-down caricature of its former self turns a Mayhem show into a sort of spectacle that is less about what is on stage and more about whatever the band’s legacy is perceived to be.
That being said, Mayhem was pretty good at the Gramercy, though the songs from the earlier years of the band’s repertoire were best. The singer, splattered in blood and wearing some sort of hell-priest robes, interacted with and sang to a skull that he held in his hand throughout the set. Depending on your feelings towards this sort of thing, it was either really cool or really cheesy.
Polish death/black metal outfit Hate was the highlight of the night for me, playing raw and martial rippers that fit nicely with their old-school corpse paint. Keep of Kalessin was pretty “eh”. Too solo-heavy and lacking in imagination, in my opinion, while Woe and Abigail Williams evoked a similar level of enthusiasm from me, the former needing to switch up the beat once in a while and the latter needing something resembling conviction.
The quote of the night? Some guy yelling, “I love Hate!” before Hate took the stage.
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