Seven Stories…Suren Karapetyan

Photographer: Suren Karapetyan
Site: www.f666.biz
Based in: NYC

I was looking through gigs upon gigs of photos that I could possibly pick for this little feature, and finally found seven I was happy with. It was difficult to pick photos that I likes and wanted to “show off,” and photos that actually had a great story behind them, like these below. What I was happy to discover was that these photographs really represent the different stages I went through in the roughly three years of photographing this growing scene here in New York City. From bands that I started going to see, to formats I started to use. As a whole, these Seven Stories more so chronicle, I’d say, the growing photographer and metal head in me.

ONE

Finally, three years after hearing about the “biggest metal party of the year”, I got the chance, the money and the friends to go with. I kept telling myself, “I’m going to go, but I will not bring my camera, I’m going to have fun and not shoot a damn thing!” What a lie!

Day one of Maryland Deathfest I bumped into my friend, Justina Villanueva (who also did this Seven Stories feature!), and I was explaining to her how much I was itching to shoot something. She said something along the lines of…”do it, get a disposable!”. I couldn’t resist and I did, I ended up buying three. I didn’t want to shoot bands though; I wanted to shoot the parking lot. Why? Partly due to inspiration from Heavy Metal Parking Lot and partly because there was just so much more fun happening back there underneath the shade of the highway than outside by the stages. I shot drunken metalheads cooking, eating, raising the invisible oranges, headbanging and of course drinking! I also caught the immense number of crust punks that come to this festival year after year to just hang out in the parking lot and drink bagged alcohol. Crusties are damn fascinating! I’m real happy with the entire set and it did real well on the Invisible Oranges website.

TWO

This photo represents what was one of the hardest shows I’ve ever shot. Next to Cannibal Corpse, I can’t think of a lot of bands that are tougher to shoot. Let me rephrase, it’s not the band that’s tough to shoot, it’s the crowd that makes it difficult. Cannibal Corpse has one of the most wildest and pit-crazy fans. If you’ve never seen them or need a visual, then YouTube the ‘Cannibal Corpse wall of death’ videos for a taste of what it was like. I was Stripped, Raped and Strangled (pun) to get the shots I got of one of the greatest death metal bands in our time, and it was all worth it! I not only had the honor to shoot them, but I even got to hang out after the show and talk to the nicest guy ever, Alex Webster. I shot some Polaroids of this show as well and gave him one as a keepsake. This set ended up on BrooklynVegan. What a death metal weekend that was, Incantation rolled through town the following day.

THREE

What are those papers flying!? Why do people have lighters out?! No, no it wasn’t because there was a fucking Guns ‘N Roses ballad playing.

This was on what was my first tour ever. It was with me Mutant Supremacy in the dead of winter, last January. Throughout the tour, on days that we felt we had enough money to book a motel, we stayed at such luxurious resorts as Motel 6, Super 8 and the Red Roof. Winslow, the bassist of course, was on a hunt to collect literature throughout the tour. He had collected some Tolstoy boocks purchased at a book shop in Anywhere, USA 66666 and about a handful of Bibles collected throughout the entire two week run at various such said resorts. It still boggles my brain to this day as to why hotels and motels stock fucking Bibles in all their rooms. I want the Torah, I want the Quran and I want LaVey’s Satanic bibles in there too, but I guess the budget won’t allow for this.

This was in Philly, on one of our last days on tour and the Bibles are weighing down our van. In order to make it back home without the extra weight, Mutant Supremacy decided it was time to get rid of these in a ritual burning whilst playing a Slayer cover, the appropriately titled “Jesus Saves.”

FOUR

I love shooting Magrudergrind, but it sucks. The crowd is nuts, there is stage diving, circle pitting, crowd surfing, making out and beers flying. All of which isn’t that friendly to ye old concert photographer. This is my third time photographing the boys and I was delighted to find out that they have heard of my photography site, f666, and thought my photos of them were “rad.” This is towards the end of the set when I thought it was all said and done, and all my gear was safe, but of course R.J. the guitarist decides to fly over me into the crowd. He was caught by the crowd, and this picture, which I love so much.

FIVE

Mayhem decided to come to America at the perfect time, right as I discovered them. A year prior I did a radio show my university’s radio station called Thrashin’ Thursdays. It was a fun show, and the free promos were all worth it, and we actually had the most listeners of the school’s radio station, a whopping 13 listeners!

Anyway, this show is at Irving Plaza, where in order to shoot, you need a photo pass. At this point I had no connections, in fact, this was my first “real metal show” I shot. (Well maybe second, Anthrax was first on the coldest day of the year). So I emailed Relapse, because Cephalic Carnage was playing too, and wrote them that I was from the radio station and was covering the show for Thrashin’ Thursdays, this is a lie, the show was over the year prior, and I nothing to do with the radio station at this point. But, WSVA, the radio station, was still in their “system,” and so I was granted a pass.

I didn’t know what to expect, I brought everything, flashes, lenses, extra batteries, but I didn’t expect an auditory assault. Luckily a fellow was there with some earplugs, who also offered me some other pointers on shooting shows. (Cheers Paul Birman!) Funny story about this set of photos though; they ended up in a television show on G4 called ‘That’s tough’. The segment in the show featured the “toughest” bands, in where Mayhan beat out GG Allin and Ozzy Osbourne.

SIX

Who isn’t sick of going through 400 to 700 photos after shooting a digital mess at a gig? You concert photographers know exactly what I’m talking about. Up until this point, I haven’t shot a single show on film. I absolutely love film, and have been developing black and white film since the high school darkroom days. Did people at your high school smoke in the loading rooms in the darkroom? I know, bad idea, luckily I focused on making prints.

I decided to finally do it and shot a roll of 36 exposures at the Krallice and Withered show a couple of months back, and boy was it worth it. Nostalgia kicked in and I was extremely happy with the results. I was content with the overexposures, underexposures, blowouts, grain and the rest of the mysteries of film. I ended up using a picture from the set, one of Colin, on the cover of my forthcoming photo zine. Look for it this month!

SEVEN

Cannabis Corpse can put on a show. I have seen these dudes, and now friends, plenty of times but for some reason never got around to photographing them up until this gig at the Bowery Electric. This photo represents everything a Cannabis Corpse show is like and should be. It’s fucking green, always. It’s smoky and it smells like a forest. Andy is always running into the pit and everything is a blurry mess of light beams.

So if you’ve ever seen these dudes, you know they bring a “bud” costume to their set. This costume reeks of beer and man odor. Of course as I’m shooting I decide it’s a wise idea to be the man in the bud costume and shoot the show while getting tossed around. If you wear this suit, you will be in the pit. The results I got are the ones that ended up in this set. Talk about a visceral and a method way of shooting a show. If we’re friends on Facebarf, then you’ve probably seen the pictures me in the suit and have asked, “what is going on here?!”