Oregon Music News: Oregon’s all-genre music magazine since 2009

07/08/2022

Through the Eyes of a Child: Arch Enemy / Behemoth - Photos and video

By SYDNEY and MIKE LEWIS // Ten year-old Sydney and her dad Mike on Arch Enemy and Behemoth...photos and a video in which they discuss things metal an photographic.

It has reached the point where if I’m planning on covering a show and Sydney knows about it, she wants to go as well, it doesn’t necessarily matter what band it is or if she likes the music, she just wants to go. Of course, there are times that she is familiar with certain bands, if nothing else, just by the names. She also gets exposed to a great deal of music that is more on the fringes of the musical mainstream, and quite a bit more extreme, than many other children in her age group would but for her, this has been a part of her life as long as she can remember.

Sydney might not be able to tell you that names of any songs by Arch Enemy, Behemoth, or Napalm Death, she might not even know who is who if you were to play one of their songs, but at the very least she knows that names of the bands. At some point in her life, she has heard them although she might not remember it. She’s also still trying to learn what all those numerous sub-genres of metal are and even if she doesn’t quite understand the difference between grindcore and black metal, she still wants to go to the shows. Outside of Sabaton, I don’t think she has ever managed to join me in the photo pit for the more extreme side of metal although she did beg to go to GWAR with me and that idea was quickly shot down.

Even without knowing the bands, she still did manage to enjoy herself although the photo pit this time out was a little more intense than what she has seen previously. Luckily a majority of the photographers have seen her at past shows so if I’m not close to where she is, they are all fairly good about trying to make sure that she’s out of harms way when a crowd surfer manages to come over the barricade. As usual, she managed to make her way home from another show without any major injury.

This however was another show where she wasn’t quite prepared for every possible photo opportunity. During our third and final song in the photo pit during Arch Enemy, lead vocalist Alissa White-Gluz took notice of Syndey, went to the side of the stage, and threw the horns at her. The way home was filled with a small child complaining about their photo being too blurry to use and how she just wasn’t as ready as she hoped. Of course, dad wasn’t ready either. I was too busy telling her to get a picture instead of taking one myself. You’d think after this many shows I would know to keep an eye on the performers who quite often decide to try and give her a perfect photo opportunity.

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