Carving Out The Eyes Of God
It’s always refreshing going to a gig cold, not really expecting too much and then subsequently leaving totally and utterly blown away! Tonight’s Billboard Metalfest featured local act The Amenta opening the gates of hell for Goatwhore, Behemoth and Job For A Cowboy. A veritable feast of Metal goodness that had the Melbourne throng in pure Metal overload!
Having said that, I thought Goatwhore were one out of the box and completely obliterated all in their path.
I wasn’t feeling the best today so an assignment to photograph these bands was going to be quite a challenge. Apologies to my editor, but I didn’t get to shoot Job For A Cowboy tonight as the long day finally took its toll on me but I did manage to shoot the aforementioned Goatwhore – who practically tore a hole in the Billboard stage such was their ferocity and attack of the Melbourne audience. They were good! Real good and an absolute pleasure to shoot.
When I was in the pit and shooting them from dead center, I did cop a boot to the back of the head from a flying punter which rattled me momentarily and once the bodies started fliyng over, the security got us the hell out of dodge so in effect, I only had two songs to work with tonight.
Just before Behemoth was to hit the stage, there were quite a few photogs and security in the pit. Hardly any room to move in and I noticed one of the security guards signal to the others in hand gestures, ‘photos one song only’. Great. It is pretty hard to capture anything decent with such a small amount of time, but thankfully, we ended up getting our three songs.
The fans seemed to lap everything up that Behemoth had to offer but in all honesty, they just didn’t do it for me. Maybe its ‘cos prior act Goatwhore put in such a stunning set that anything following them, would have to be of a pretty freaking high standard. Still, it was fun shooting them – I do like photographing the visual acts and visual is exactly what they were.
As stated, I was in no condition to stick around for Job For A Cowboy so I unfortunately missed out on that opportunity.
View the complete set over at the Slideshow to the right, or on 
