This assignment was meant to give us practice in covering an event. I enjoyed this assignment and experienced what it’s like to report on a concert. This assignment allowed me to attend my first metal concert and I was able to reach out to the venue to secure a press pass. I learned what doing concert photography behind the barrier is like and was able to become more comfortable with approaching strangers for interviews.
The doors to the Granada Theatre opened for metal fans attending the show on Thursday, April 20. Death metal band Carcass was headlining; while death metal band Creeping Death, and thrash metal bands, Sacred Reich and Municipal Waste opened.
Two of the bands, Carcass and Sacred Reich, are pioneers of the thrash metal and death metal subgenres. Formed in 1985, Sacred Reich operated in the United States while Carcass grew in England.
Sacred Reich helped lead the second wave of the thrash metal subgenre after its previous boom in the early 1980s, while Carcass is one of the earliest bands of the metal subgenres: melodic death metal and grindcore.
For decades metal served as a safe space, allowing people to safely express their anger through wild and energetic music. This was reflected at the concert with the loud music, fast strobe lights, and lots of screaming and head-banging.
“It’s definitely a unique kind of music,” Said audience member BJ Sharp. “I feel that it just sounds more active, more violent. It’s not like any music out there today, I mean today, all you hear is a lot of autotune and electronic beeps and boops. Music like this takes a lot of talent to write and perform every night.”
Within the 4 hours and 15 minutes of the show, Fans formed several mosh pits which were encouraged by the bands, while Municipal Waste requested that the audience crowd surf. Despite some performers from Sacred Reich and Carcass being in their 50s, their energy remained high and their appreciation to their fans was visible.
Sacred Reich frontman Phil Rind joked around after mishearing a fan who requested they play their 1988 song ‘Surf Nicaragua.’
This intimacy with the artists is valued, and some metalheads have their reservations when it comes to the growth of metal.
“To be honest I think most of us would prefer it stays kind of small and friendly, the way it is,” said Mannie Liscum, a fan in attendance.
“You know, some of us would think ‘It would be nice if these bands were more popular,’ but it’s great to see bands like this in a place that holds a couple of thousand people. If they were Foo Fighter level, it wouldn’t be that intimate and you wouldn’t get to hang out with these guys.”
Orlando Padilla, a fan who has attended nearly 500 shows in the past seven years, describes it as addicting.
“It’s just like they’re one of us. They aren’t like pop singers, the phonies, to be able to do this for fourty years. I think people, outside us fans or any music like metal, they don’t understand.”