Concert Report: The Devil’s North American Tour 2025 at El Rey Theater

Intro:

It’s an open secret that I have both BPD and synesthesia. I feel everything three thousand percent! Love feels like a 24/7 full body euphoria, it physically feels like I’m flying, but if the sentiment is unrequited, I plummet like Icarus with melted wings, instantaneously falling from the stratosphere, down to the middle of the Earth’s crust, all in a single nanosecond, leaving a Cheryl-shaped hole in the ground, a la Wile. E. Coyote. And the emotion of hatred feels exactly like drowning in an entire ocean of slick motor oil, filling my nose, mouth, and lungs with thick, dark, pungent, toxic, slimy, slippery liquid, plastering my hair to my skull, binding my limbs, pulling me under into infinite blackness. 

So the thrill and excitement of a metal show, shakes me to the very marrow of my bones! I was literally shivering with anticipation. I was freaking stoked and pumped, but also an anxious nervous wreck. The night already got off to a rocky start, when my rideshare dropped me off in the sketchy alleyway behind the venue, instead of the normal sidewalk up front. Then when tickets turned out to be cash only at the door, I was blushing with embarrassment as I funbled at the ATM and held up the line.  Then when I checked my heartrate on my smartwatch, it was pounding at about 125 BPM. 

I physically could not contain myself. By the end of the night, I was so dizzy from headbanging, that it felt like an out-of-body experience, or astral projection. As I was so overwhelmed and overstimulated, this concert blended pleasure and pain in the most perfect way possible. 

The concert: 

Vale of Pnath literally made me weak in the knees, like a really rough kinky eargasm. I headbanged so hard, that my leather bondage harness accidentally fell loose from my shoulders, and instead hung loosely from my hips. No wonder why everyone was staring at me with dirty looks! Gee, maybe it was because of the fetish gear, which I didn’t realize had, quite embarrassingly, fallen down dangling awkwardly between my legs!? In any other context, I’d probably be mortified. But at an extreme metal concert? I shrugged it off with a laugh, reattached the harness, tightened the belt buckles more securely behind my neck, and resumed enjoying the show. 

The floor felt like it was shaking beneath my feet. The music was so loud, the melodies so complex, the groove so infectious,, the rhythm so pounding, the beat so heavy… This goes hard! It reminded me of why I fell in love with metal in the first place! 

Eventually, a tall couple (probably average size, but still taller than me) walked in, and naturally, out of all the free spots available in the relatively open bar area, they chose to stand directly in front of me, because of course they did. Most of us are probably already accustomed to this ubiquitous concert annoyance. It’s just part of the typical show experience, just like unexpectedly getting caught in a mosh, or some random drunkard spilling his beer on you. Gotta roll with the punches, and take the good with the bad! Besides, this irritating inconvenience was only a temporary setback, as this was VoP’s last song, after which I left my spot on the floor to get another beer anyway. 

After that initial adrenaline rush, Arkona slowed things way down. Maybe even a little too slow for my personal tastes, at least initially. The first few songs sounded very similar to each other. To be fair, I had never heard of this band before, let alone seen them perform, so I am not particularly familiar with their discography. Besides, they picked up the pace and increased the tempo and cranked the volume as their set went on, as each song grew progressively heavier and heavier throughout the night. They saved the best for last, and went out with a bang, concluding their stage time with a few absolute bangers. 

I’ve always been open and honest about the fact that I’m a single lady, and I quite enjoy picking up dudes/chicks/enbies at metal shows. Although I came alone, I met a cute guy who held my hand while we headbanged together, and he also held my purse in the mosh pit. That is objectively adorable! However, too bad he bit down too hard while kissing. Don’t get me wrong, I love little nibbles and soft lovebites. But if my lips are literally bleeding after making out? Maybe tone it down a bit, tiger. 

Belphegor. Light of my life. Fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Bel-phe-gor. Just invoking the name alone gives me shivers and chills, each individual syllable thrilling me to the molecules of my very quintessence.  Their stage presence involves intense and elaborate pyrotechnics, including a burning goat skull. Their unique style, is also characterized by iconic corpse paint. 

Their brilliant setlist was beautiful, brutal, and especially, badass. Just as braggadocious and bodacious as I remember, from the last time when I most recently saw them before this one! I felt belligerent and  brave, as the intricate melodies and primal rhythms beckoned me, ever forward. Belphegor embodies all of the perfect archetypes of black metal, death metal, and extreme metal. They’re everything that I ever wanted, and more. 

Ah, but, alas! Parting is such sweet sorrow! I never wanted the night to end. But of course, it had to come to an inevitable closure, at least eventually. 

Outro: 

Hindsight is always 20/20. Regardless, in retrospect, I think it’s fairly obvious, that I was probably experiencing some kind of panic/anxiety at the concert, hence my edgy mood and racing heartbeat. But as always, music tames the savage beast. 

I’m a walking contradiction. The show was so incredibly hard, heavy, loud, and powerful,  but by the time I quietly crawled into bed, I felt extremely soft, sensitive, sentimental, and sweet. This feeling of taciturnity especially manifested itself the day after the show, when I rolled out of bed sometime around noon, and took a warm bubble bath, to cleanse myself of all the sweat and grime (and just a little bit of blood). 

Even though I had a great time, and was well rested, my heart and head still raced with nervous energy. I curled up in an intense fetal position, elbows to knees. Teeth, knuckles and toes tightly clenched, squeezing, shrinking, imploding into myself as small as humanly possible, and then some. I lay sideways in this tense pose, with my head underwater in the bathtub, trying to hold my breath as long as I possibly could, which was only about a minute or two. 

I held my breath underwater, feeling my long tangled hair float and purl all around my head, gentle waves of lavender scented foam cascading over my bare body. Finally, at long last, my mind and muscles released their own internal tension. It’s so funny how I felt so peacefully relaxed, while thinking about such violently angry music! I just had to symbolically drown myself and/or return to the womb, in order to finally lay my head to rest. You know, typical post-concert aftercare.

I reflected on everything that had transpired last night. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It was a mixed bag, for sure. I was emotionally anxious, socially awkward, and mentally irritable, pretty much from start to finish. But despite my own psychological fragility, it was all worth it. The music itself was incredible. I ran into a few old friends, which helped to ease my frazzled nerves, at least a little bit. Besides, we’re all a community. Just like any family, it can be dysfunctional sometimes, and I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I’m the toxic one. Maybe I’m the spoiled rotten crybaby little sister, the stoner burn out cousin, or the eccentric cat lady auntie. I’m not perfect. Nobody and nothing is. But that’s what makes life so interesting! Especially special events like tours and festivals! All things considered, 4 stars outta 5!