While roaming around the internet and social media, from time to time, you come across a music project that pulls you in with its uniqueness and artistic vision. That happened to me again last when a project called Witch Club Satan came on my radar, a Norwegian black metal trio that is taking the underground genre to new places and even received mentorship and a stamp of approval from no other than black metal legend Necrobutcher from Mayhem. Luckily I came across them just in time to catch them bringing their theatrical performance to the Finnish theater festival Baltic Circle and got to experience this once in a lifetime piece of performance art…
This was truly a very different experience. Having attended plenty of black metal shows, this was really something else. While quite some black metal bands have some theatrics in their shows to varying degrees, Witch Club Satan quite literally managed to combine a theater piece and music concert into a coherent performance. Starting off with some mysterious characters coming on stage in fantastical looking outfits, one making a declaration and others starting an eerie chant, they really set the stage and pulled in the attention of everyone present. After that, the next act kicked off by the 3 ladies adorned in filthy looking black metal outfits blasting us with some raw and relentless extreme metal. They were easily on par with some of the best black metal I’ve caught live, and gave off an almost dangerous vibe with scary looks and empowered stances while cranking out nasty riffs. After being shaken thoroughly, suddenly another character appeared, dressed in all-white, for one of the ladies splatter her apron with blood and at some point even crawl off the stage to make some bloody marks on the face of a woman sitting front row. The now blood splattered, dressed in white character went on making another sort of declaration, giving off some really eerie vibes, and introducing the next act in this performance. A next act that got the ladies of Witch Club Satan come on stage basically wearing just long wigs, moving into yet another frantic black metal part that eventually culminated into the 3 women surrounding what I assume was the “Mother” in the performance.
The “Bloodmother” performance spoke of women empowerment, the hardship women have to go through for just being a woman, including sensitive topics like pregnancy, birth and periods. All of that packed into an hour long captivating performance that told a story through both spoken word parts, theatrical actions that needed no words and some of the grimmest black metal around. An absolutely impressive piece of art that will easily be the best live show I’ve caught in 2023!
Find more pictures of this impressive piece of art here!
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