CARACH ANGREN with MORS PRINCIPIUM EST, WOLFHEART and EMPYREAN THRONE at BEAUTY BAR LV

Beauty Bar welcomed black metal gods CARACH ANGREN Empyrean Throne, Wolfheart, Mors Principium Estto downtown Las Vegas, and the metal community showed up en masse for the show featuring guests .

Starting things off was the black metal band from CA, EMPYREAN THRONE, a powerhouse of a band and employ theatrics and wicked stage props into their show. Their sound is dark, heavy and ritualistic, and they call their tour the Pitch Black Horror over North America. Led by vocalist Andrew Knudsen, the band has been around since 2011 and has several singles as well as a full length album Choasborne out in 2017, check it out on Bandcamp HERE .

A band who blew everyone away was WOLFHEART, a melodic death metal band from Lahti, Finland that was next on the bill. Wolkheart's leader and vocalist Tuomas Saukkonen is a beast on vocals, and labels the band's sound as 'Winter Metal'. Since 2012 Wolfheart has been Saukkonen's focused 'labor of love' (prior to which he had multiple projects with Before The Dawn, Black Sun Aeon, Dawn Of Solace and RoutaSielu), and has released 4 Wolfheart albums in the last 6 years, the latest being Constellation Of the Black Light released in September which the band pulls heavily from in the live show. This band is tight, and live they are remarkable, and along with Saukkonen has a band of tenured black metal musicians aboard with Mika Lammassaari on guitar (Eternal Tears of Sorrow, Mors Subita), Lauri Silvonen on bass (Bloodred Hourglass), and Joonas Kauppinen on drums (Disease of the Nation). Saukkonen stated that Beauty Bar was the most odd venue in the most fun city in the world, and he is right - an outdoor venue off an alley in downtown Las Vegas that draws a energetic local crowd. Check out their new album Constellation of the Black Light at Amazon HERE .

Mors Principium Est from Finland have been together since 1999, and are the old hands on the tour, who’s sound is also melodic death metal. This is a very good band, and has been through a few lineup changes, but still led by vocalist Ville Viljanen who joined in early 2000. Mors Principium Est latest album, Embers of a Dying World, was released in 2017 and is also available on Amazon HERE .

The Netherlands' symphonic black metal band CARACH ANGREN is a monster that just keeps getting better and better. All of their studio albums are concept albums, and lead singer Dennis "Seregor" Droomers acts out each and every song on the stage, and he is one of the best and most entertaining frontmen of this genre I have seen. Seregor builds all the props himself that are used throughout their show, even the masks he wears at different intervals, and the band uses 'corpse paint' to give them that unique look along with their 17th century clothing. The Vegas headliners started with Clemens "Ardek" Wijers keyboard moving by itself, which seemed to frighten some females in the front who were taken aback by what they were seeing. The set started with "Charlie" from their latest (2017) release Dance and Laugh Amongst the Rotten, and began a theatrical masterpiece of a show. One of the highlights was when Seregor came out wearing a crown and skeleton mask, and pushed forward on the stage, taunting the crowd with his cat like movements. There was a figure on stage covered by a white sheet for most of the show, and near the end Seregor uncovered what was a heinous looking female, and immediately took a rather large knife and began stabbing it violently. He viciously slit her throat and blood poured down her body, setting Seregor off into a frenzy and he started swinging the knife and stabbing it into the air blindly. Carach Angren is a must see, with theatrics and performance art, great visuals and killer songs, and one of the best frontmen you will ever see.