The Tokyo Concert Experience

  For Mayhem the adjective “infamous” is kind of an euphemism. It is well known that murder, suicide, all kinds of illegal activity and practices of the occult have been part of its history. But even me, someone who doesn’t believe in the separation between art and artist, can’t deny their contribution to music. Black metal owns a debt to Mayhem like no other genre owns to any other artist. They set the framework of it around forty years ago and rarely the genre has deviated from it. On top of that they haven’t been afraid of experimenting adding references to punk, industrial among other genres, throughout their discography. They really are a fascinating group of musicians. This show was sort of a celebration of their evolution and contributions to the black metal imagery. The main reason for me going was the metal shows drought Tokyo have experienced since the pandemic. I don’t know, maybe most of this extreme band members are not too concerned with Covid restrictions and that’s...