It’s Death Above Life At The Brooklyn Bowl On April 6th

All Photos By Rocky Kessenger/Through The Metal Lens
Band Photo Credit: Niklas Karlsson

The Photographer vs The Fan

Some nights in the pit are easy. You know your job, you know your angles, and you stay locked behind the lens from the first note to the last. Then there are nights like this one, where the line between photographer and fan starts to blur before the house lights even go down. April 6 at the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas was one of those nights. The Death Above Life Tour rolled into town with a lineup built to test that balance: ATLAS opening with cold atmosphere, OV SULFUR carrying the emotional weight of the middle slot, and ORBIT CULTURE headlining a show I had personally waited almost five years to see. Walking into the room, camera in hand, I already knew the expectations were high. The fan in me had been counting the days. The photographer in me was trying to stay professional. By the end of the night, one of those sides had clearly won.

ATLAS had the unenviable task of opening a show stacked with anticipation, but from the moment “Sermon to the Dying Light,” rolled across the venue, they immediately pulled the room into their world. The band came out draped in red light and atmosphere, launching into “Tower,” “Coven of Two,” and “Anodyne,” with an intense, mythic weight that fit their Finnish roots perfectly. I had not heard them before this show, and one of the things I have always loved about nights like this is the chance to discover a band in the exact environment their music was built for. ATLAS did exactly that. They were high-energy without feeling forced, and atmospheric without losing momentum. After the third song, they paused to introduce themselves and thank the crowd, and it was one of those earnest moments that immediately won people over, with fans near the front were already shouting “I love you!” back and forth with the band. By the time they moved through “I Whisper Your Name Like a Curse,” “Uni,” “Ukko,” and closed with “Salt and Sulfur,” they had done exactly what a first band should do: turn unfamiliar listeners into future fans.

Then came OV SULFUR, and the room shifted from atmosphere to fire. This was not my first time seeing them, and it definitely will not be the last. The first time I caught them was on the ABORTED tour, and that night was rough for reasons outside the band’s control. The house PA system was awful, the vocal mics kept failing, and the frustration in the room was palpable. Even through all of that, they still managed to put on a strong performance. Fast forward to Las Vegas, and this felt like the redemption arc. This was home turf, and everyone in that building knew it. They tore into “Endless // Godless,” “Seed,” and “Stained in Rot,” with a confidence that only comes from playing in front of your own people. After the first few songs, Josh stepped forward to welcome everyone to the hometown show and gave love to the friends and family in the room. It was one of the more emotional moments of the night, the kind that reminds you there are real people behind the brutality and that this stop carried extra meaning. Then Ricky shifted the room entirely with “Wither,” slowing everything down and dedicating the song to anyone carrying grief. The crowd moving their hands back and forth in a wave was an unusual sight for a deathcore show, but it fit the moment perfectly. For a few minutes, the aggression gave way to something deeply human before they closed strong with “Forlorn,” “Vast Eternal,” and “Evermore.”

Then it was time. I had waited almost five years to finally see ORBIT CULTURE, so let’s be honest—the expectations for this set were sky high. I’ll save everyone the suspense right now: there was absolutely zero disappointment in that room. Well… except for one thing. They were sold out of all the XL shirts. Not cool, guys. Not cool. The moment the stage dropped into darkness and those opening silhouettes appeared against the towering backdrops, you could feel the room tense up. Then they launched into “Death Above Life,” and whatever air was left in Brooklyn Bowl got crushed under the weight of those first riffs. The sound was massive and thick, punishing, and somehow still clean enough to let every groove and melody land exactly where it needed to. What stood out immediately was the guitar work. The solos and lead work were absolutely off the chart. Every melodic lead cut through the room with surgical precision, while the rhythm work underneath hit like concrete slabs falling from the ceiling.

This was the point in the night where the photographer and the fan really started fighting. There were multiple moments where it was genuinely difficult not to lower the camera and just stand there and watch. The professional in me managed about 85% of the time (don’t tell my editor). From “The Storm,” into “The Tales of War,” the crowd was fully locked in, and by the time they rolled into “North Star of Nija,” the place felt electric. Niklas took a moment to ask if Vegas knew the lyrics, and Vegas absolutely delivered. The entire room roared the chorus back, creating one of the strongest crowd moments of the night. Then “Saw,” wrapped the room in eerie green light before “From the Inside,” hit with red, blue, and sharp white strobes cutting through the haze. It was one of the few times the lighting truly matched the intensity of what was happening onstage.

Then came “Bloodhound,” and from there the show somehow found another gear. One of the funniest and most memorable moments of the night came during “While We Serve.” Niklas threw the question out to the room: “Vegas, are you ready to serve?” The response wasn’t loud enough, so he walked offstage. For a second, the room just stared. Then the bassist stepped forward and, in perfect deadpan fashion, let us know it was tough being the bassist because apparently, they had him up there doing crowd work now. He counted the crowd in, got everyone screaming louder, and finally brought the rest of the band back out. This time the room answered loud enough to shake the floor, and the circle pit immediately exploded, bodies moving in waves across the room.

By the time “Hydra” hit, the room was already exhausted, but ORBIT CULTURE still had one final moment left. No encore was needed. They paused to thank ATLAS, OV SULFUR, Las Vegas, and everyone who came out to spend their night with what they jokingly called “some long-haired Swedish guys.” Then came “Vultures of North.” As the opening riff hit, they called for a wall of death to finish the show. Watching that crowd split straight down the middle, hold the tension for a second, and then collide on cue was the perfect ending to everything the night had been building toward.

Five years is a long time to build a show up in your head. Long enough for expectations to become almost impossible to satisfy, long enough for the memory of every missed tour stop, every scheduling conflict, and every “next time” to stack up into something larger than the show itself. And somehow, ORBIT CULTURE still came in and shattered every one of those expectations in the best possible way. This was more than finally crossing a band off a list I had carried with me for years. It was one of those rare nights that reminds you exactly why you keep coming back to dark rooms, loud amplifiers, and the chaos of the pit with a camera hanging from your shoulder. You spend hours chasing the perfect frame, trying to freeze a fraction of a second that somehow captures the violence, the emotion, and the electricity in the room, but sometimes the music hits so hard that it cuts right through the professional side of you and takes you back to the reason you fell in love with this scene in the first place. Nights like this are not just concerts; they are reminders that this community is built on connection, on shared release, on thousands of voices becoming one and bodies crashing together in a way that somehow still feels like family. This is why the metal community stands apart from anything else. It is loud, chaotic, emotional, and fiercely alive. Five years of waiting, and somehow it was worth every damn second. Till we see you in the pit again.

ATLAS

OV SULFUR

ORBIT CULTURE