11:45 P.M. – The time I finally arrived in Columbus, Ohio to behold something rarely seen and experience something rarely felt, an event that entails a complete and utter possession of the mind and body: Aevangelist live. Through three hours of snow-ridden, treacherous roadways, I made it to Carabar… to find that the band were nowhere to be seen. Their vehicle broken down in Indiana, the mysterious group lay stranded for four hours in those same subzero temperatures. Hearing this, my heart sank, thinking I had made such a long, dangerous trek for nothing.
But frozen was not the inner flame of this hellish project. They were still coming.
And the “performance” left on the stage that night might not even be called that. It’s much closer to a live exorcism. Between the three that took the stage, each displayed their own unique personality that was not their own, but was a different expression of the same, alien thing. As if they were but empty vessels through which something greater – and far darker – than themselves could find expression, each member of Aevangelist, not unlike the audience, appeared to be at the mercy of an indiscriminate, sanity smashing force the human mind cannot grasp.
The territory into which I had wandered was a realm the band refers to as the “Abysscape” – an arena of unimaginable horror, a place where the torture derives not from physical torments, but from a collapsing cognizance. The lead man donned a mask that was Phantom of the Opera-like in appearance and was often in a heaped, hunched over position on his knees, or lying flat, staring at the floor, tormented by something he could only express through inhuman vocalizations and convulsions that would leave his body in the most unusual of contortions. The guitarist would often seem to be staring up into eternity with emblazoned eyes, lost in a world of phantoms as he traversed enigmatic patterns of destruction on the fret board.
And the bassist delivered screams that parallel those of the Nazgûl in pitch and delivery; shattering the frail parapets of the mind, seemingly ignited with a kinetic force that left him frenzied and itching with fervor to expel the harsh forces swelling within. Encircling the band were a mix of looming, disturbing synth samples that provided an ever-present sense of otherworldly atmosphere that could unsettle the most adept of extreme metal listeners.
What I saw that night in Columbus was a whole new incarnation of death; one in which the practitioners weren’t evil in themselves necessarily, but were very human…just stricken with an unseen, crippling presence. This was best illustrated by the bands concluding moments in which each member lay prostrate, belting out the most terror stricken of screams one after another as if they had all just woken from a nightmare all too real, appearing deeply disturbed by their performance. And like a nightmare, Aevangelist came and went – but their mark remains indelibly imprinted upon my psyche.
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