The most awaited night for the last weeks (or may I say years?) arrived. Mayhem finally played in our homeland. The stakes were very high since they’re famous for their past, they would have to exceed the high expectations of the Portuguese fans.
The only opening band in the city of Porto was supposed to be Daemogorgon. Corpus Christii were only opening the show in Lisbon but, according to a source, when Mayhem heard about this, they practically demanded and made everything possible so they could go to Porto and play with them. They succeeded.
When we arrived the Portuguese black metallers Corpus Christii were starting to play, in general they had a good reception from the audience, specially on tracks such as “The Wanderer” with Nocturnus Horrendus doing some clean voices that really improved the song and of course “All Hail”. They presented a new line-up that included the bass player of the great doom metal band from Lisbon “Desire” and a new drummer.
The stars of the night made themselves wait a couple of minutes before entering the stage. you could already see two pig’s heads impaled contrasting with the commemorating red flags of the 25 years of Mayhem (a little bit outdated now). Then Mr. Attila Csihar entered the stage dressed as an evil sorcerer from the XII century, well, with some recent props!
They started with some old tracks like “Pagan Fear”, “Cursed in Eternity”, “Buried by time and Dust” and of course the mostly known “Freezing Moon”. They played a little bit of everything, a quite careful selection if i may say, but mostly from “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” album, although many fans wished they would have played “Funeral Fog”. There were indeed some complaints about Hellhammer’s triggers that in some way suffocated the rest of the instruments. I personally could hardly listened to Teloch’s guitar (live member). His guitar finally came to life in the ”Freezing Moon” solo, he had a very quiet and static posture on stage. The man of the night was Attila. Highlights were his theatrical attitude and ghoulish performance. It wasn’t only about the music. It was about the scenical part of it with the sorcerer’s outfit and then in the end with the Easter priest clothing, wearing a crucifix and making anti-religious comments (it was after all Good Friday), talking to a skull and then whispering and singing to the pig’s heads and then deciding to throw them to the public ended up reenforcing the whole act, directing the attention of most of the public to this aspect of the show.
Overall it was a fairly decent show with a good theatrical component. The fans were not disappointed to get the standard Mayhem show with all the usual props and slogans. The performance was affected by some technical issues that were resolved quickly enough and the band showed great musicianship and professionalism. I could go without the preaching though.
Mayhem’s Playlist:
• Pagan fears
• Ancient skin
• My death
• Cursed in eternity
• A time to die
• View from nihil
• Illuminate Eliminate
• Anti
• Freezing Moon
• Silvester Anfang
• Deathcrush
• Buried by time and dust
• Carnage
• De mysteriis Dom sathanas
• Pure Fucking Armageddon
