Traces Of The Real

The Button Factory is fast becoming my favourite venue to shoot these pictures in. It’s got a great balcony that allows both the stage and the crowd to appear in the shot. On Sunday May 2nd they had another Dublin Metal Events gig going on there – this time with long-running English death metal stalwarts Bolt Thrower. I got in around 7:30 just before the the doors were opening and asked the promoter if there was a support act tonight. “Yeah” he said. “Four of them. Bolt Thrower should be on around 12AM”.

So, rather than hanging around for 4 hours or so, I opted to shoot some of the support bands. First up were For Ruin from Cork, followed by Overoth from Belfast. I was blown away by how good both of these bands were. The more intense end of metal is not really my thing but even I could tell they were both shit hot – great musicians, great sound and completely into what they were doing. The above shot is of Overoth. That one is a pretty long exposure – about 10 minutes.

By this time I took this picture things had started to get a bit messy up on the balcony. It was filling up with punters, some of whom were fairly well on. I had visions of someone stumbling into the leg of my tripod and the whole top-heavy apparatus tipping over the railing, causing some unfortunate metaller to meet their end downstairs after having being pulverized from above by a falling 4×5 camera. So, I packed it up and left. Good night though, and one of my favourite shots so far.