With the near-encounter with Rotting Christ yesterday in the streets of Melbourne, seriously – what better way to kick off 2010′s gig photography with a nice touch of Black Metal evilness?

I was scheduled to shoot both Rotting Christ and headliners Dark Funeral at Billboard tonight – one of my fave venues to shoot at by the way – for Heavy Metal website and all round cool dudes, Metal Obsession.

Surprisingly, there were no bouncers in the photo-pit tonight and the show was only being shot by two photographers. Myself and someone else, who’s name I didn’t catch unfortunately. We had plenty of room to move in and I used this opportunity to shoot from both sides of the stage. I have a nasty habit of staying in the one spot during a shoot and not fully utilising my space to get the artist from all sorts of different angles. What can I tell you, I’m a creature of habit.

And so with the lack of security and tons of space to work with, I endeavoured to capture Rotting Christ from as many angles as possible. Certainly was great not to be hampered by a three-song limit so I stayed and shot the band for the majority of their impressive set.

As they hail from Greece, where my heritage is from, it was cool hearing the band members talk in Greek amongst themselves between songs and fully understand what was being said! Ha!

I was pleasantly surprised by the band’s energetic, well received and damn good set. I had a misconception about these guys and always felt they were much, much heavier – but they put in a blistering performance and certainly won me over. Really need to check out some of their discography, because on tonight’s showing, they obliterated!

By the time Dark Funeral hit the stage, all decked out in the Black Metal Satanic corpse-paint and the like, I was feeling a little weary. (And it probably shows in my photos of these guys). I have much respect for band’s that go that extra mile on a visual front – it always makes for more interesting photos, but tonight, I just wasn’t feeling it.

They were super-loud and often times, it all got lost in a blitz of speed and volume. I had my back resting against the P.A. system and all I could hear feel, was a blur of rapid sound rattling my rib-cage. (That was kinda fun!)

I shot as much of the band as I could from the side of the photo-pit and called it a night after that.