Live Report: Black Twilight Circle in Brooklyn
If you had, however improbably, wandered unwittingly into the Acheron in Brooklyn on Monday night [10/3], you probably wouldn’t have stuck around for too long. Unless, of course, you’re a fan of obscure ritualistic black metal and own a cassette player (the format of choice for the dudes of Los Angeles’ Black Twilight Circle), and you had somehow managed to miss the show announcement.
If you don’t know who or what the Black Twilight Circle is, don’t feel bad, but consider a re-evaluation of your kvlt status. The raw experimental black metal collective is on a rare string of East Coast ‘rituals’, as they call their shows, with Kuxan Suum, Shataan, Kallathon, and Dolorvotre playing at the Acheron. A different lineup will play the Circle’s second NYC date this Friday [10/7], at Williamsburg’s Charleston – not difficult when all the bands in your collective are made up of the same seven guys. The bands all have one thing in common: Volahn (the portly fellow with the hand tats and painted-on Zorro mask), who seems to be the ringleader of the crew. Dolorvotre, who headlined, were the highlight of the night, though the band’s 12:30-ish start time meant they were playing to roughly 20 diehards who didn’t have anything to do on Tuesday morning. Shataan led off their ‘ritual’ with a gentle flute solo (m/), while openers Kuxan Suum delivered an alternately harsh and blissful set of psychedelic black metal, setting the tone for the evening. Offering a brief respite from the Circle bands’ spaced-outness, Brooklyn’s bearded Mutilation Rites played the middle slot, delivering a thrashy set of American black metal. Well, it wasn’t really a “respite” – more like a melodic onslaught amid a smoky haze of spiritualized black spellcraft. You should have wandered in, after all.
See the full photo sets at Wyatt Marshall’s Flickr page, and see more of Wyatt’s photos at his blog, blackbeardisland.tumblr.com.
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