Mayhem at Club Quattro, January 31st 2023

 


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 why they didn’t make it to Japan in the past couple of years? Gojira played a show last November, but prices were exorbitant and I already saw them opening for Slayer in 2015. When this show was announced, though, I was hesitant at first. I saw them in 2017 touring the anniversary show for their feature length debut De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and though that was an underwhelming concert. They played only for forty five minutes, the same length as the record, with no encores. That album is amazing, but the show was predictable and they were kind of on auto-pilot. The complete opposite of this 2023 show.

I guess that because of the aforementioned drought, the place was packed. Staff members asked everyone in the audience to step forward to make room in the back. I don’t remember having this happening since the pandemic started. The opening band was Begräbnis. A female fronted Japanese one that mixes black metal and doom. They flickered the venue lights to create a strobe effect for the duration of their first lengthy song. It seemed to me from the get-go that they wanted to portray a defiant experimental image. They succeeded at that. Their music also backed them up because they were actually quite good.

The main act came next and first played a set of songs from their 21st century and late nineties albums. Including songs from their latest one, 2019’s Daemon. They were a reminder of the mighty power of this group of musicians. We also got a faire share of the vocalist Attila Csihar’s theatrical stage antics, of course menacing and fun to watch. 

After Voces Ab Alta, from their 2021 EP Atavistic Black Disorder, the band went backstage as the banners in each side of the stage were removed to reveal another set of vertical drapes depicting skulls. They came back all hooded up and played four songs from their iconic first LP. To me they sounded even better than when I saw them perform a dedicated show to this album. It could have been the energy from the crowd, which was unusually high, compared to what’s normal at shows here in Japan. It was a crushing middle section.

Crushing the did in the final part of the show as well. The banners for the final part of the show portrayed the iconic image of their former vocalist Dead, from the cover of Live in Leipzig. The punk influences of their first EP Deathcrush were showcased in full with three out of the four songs from the set being from it, plus one from the aforementioned live album. It was an exhilarating end to the show with a setlist built in descending chronological order, a brilliant and effective way to convey that, contrary to some popular belief, Mayhem is an ever changing band. At the end Csihar stood by himself on stage absorbing the audience energy. I think I caught them in a truly "on" night.  

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