Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.08.2010, Qupperneq 16

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In addition to her stellar writing capabilities, our own Rebecca Louder is a
skilled corpse painter. Fancy that!
16
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2010
Music | Mayhem
Dispatches From The
Corpse-Painting Station
Just down road from the bruised,
bloody, moshing mess of Eistnaflug’s
main venue Egilsbúð was another
den of depravity and darkness. Those
who were brave enough ventured to
Enter The Mayhemisphere... possibly
never to return! Set up in Stálsmiðjan,
an abandoned steel factory down by
Neskaupstaður’s shore, the off-venue
programming of the festival provided a
non-stop barrage of music, noise, art,
performance, booze and… facepaint!?
Yes, that’s right. On the day the
Mayhemisphere opened, this extremely
hung-over writer, still smeared in the
previous night’s facepaint, was in-
formed that her facepainting kit (and
skills!) were being enlisted for the year-
ly tradition of corpse-painting. I couldn’t
really do anything about it—Aðalsteinn,
one of the off-venue organisers, had al-
ready announced that shit on the radio.
Fuck.
Pay-what-you-can, bjór og ciga-
rettes appreciated
At 15:00 sharp, the smoke machines
were on and all mayhem broke loose.
My first corpse wanted to match his
cowboy hat, kind of a dead-western
thing. Freshly painted up as a demon
and a dead dude, hybrid noise act
DLXAMFJATX took over the PA with
a gut-wrenching set of distortion and
thrashing. I painted more faces in those
twenty minutes than at any other point
in the weekend.
Pretty soon after, crazy thrash-
metal band Manslaughter unleashed
their madness upon a packed house. A
full-on mosh pit formed inside and the
drunken fun was in full swing, literally—
people were swinging off a long metal
chain pulley left over from last year’s
festival. The pop-up bar was selling the
beer cheap, everyone was smoking in-
doors and it was open to all ages. It was
awesome.
Swords Of Chaos’ bassist Úlfur fran-
tically had me give him Euronymous
paint as his band was about to start a
set of deep, dark hardcore. What start-
ed off as a slowed-down jam session
turned into a screaming fucking frenzy.
Mayhemis-organiser and Retrön-er
Kolli came over to the painting station
and to tell me that I should have been
charging for the facepaint since he had
seen so many people downtown with
my artwork. I realised that people actu-
ally hadn’t been as generous as I gave
them credit for and decided to up the
ante the next day. Day one at the May-
hemisphere was done.
“Will you paint my balls?”
The final day of the festival started with
some much needed morning (okay
fine, afternoon) exercise with Black
Metal vs. Death Metal football in the
Mayhemisfield! Of course each team
sported their own facepaint—Brazilian
corpse-paint for BM, bleeding mouths
for DM. Black Metal had a good lead
there for a while, with some solid kick-
ers and the goal protected by Bob Clu-
ness in his Mexican wrestler gear, but
it all ended in a very hung-over 3-3 tie.
Today’s programming saw a shit-
tonne more performance art than the
previous day, nearly all of which re-
quired me to paint up a bunch of naked
men. No problem. The first set of balls
I painted was being paraded around on
a leash by his scary gothic drag queen
dominatrix who prompted Bob Cluness
to reveal: “You look like the woman who
took my virginity. She promised she
would be gentle. She lied.”
I missed the debut noise perfor-
mance by Harry Knuckles while paint-
ing up Kolli and Helgi for their perfor-
mance—a giant tube of empty beer cans
was securely fastened to their genitals
and the crowd was welcomed to limbo
under it to win two free cases of beer!
The fucking lame crowd just stood there
against the wall staring blankly like they
were being asked to go through a root
canal without anaesthetic. Finally, an
awesome woman with awesome hair
claimed the prize by writhing her way
across the ground shirtless on broken
glass.
A musical performance by AMFJ fol-
lowed, complete with Mexican wrestler
crowd-stare down. Yelling and head-
banging through the smoke aplenty
were done. The final act to play (or
maybe just that I could remember?)
was Retrön, getting everyone into su-
per-high-energy party-time with their
80s-style synth metal. As for the face-
painting, while less busy than the pre-
vious day, charging 300 ISK, a beer or
cigarettes paid off and I got fully ham-
mered for free.
It was now time to Exit The May-
hemisphere and head to the main show.
But then I did too many shrooms and
sat on a hill tripping balls until Ása from
Mammút asked if I wanted to go to her
car and listen to auto-tuned songs.
That sobered me right up. Finally went
into the venue to watch DLX ATX-er
Greg fulfil his crowd-surfing destiny,
sprained my ankle while talking to
friends and somehow made it to bed.
REBECCA LOUDER
REBECCA LOUDER
Inside The Mayhemisphere at Eistnaf lug
“The first set of balls
I painted was being
paraded around on a
leash by his scary gothic
drag queen dominatrix
who prompted Bob
Cluness to reveal: “You
look like the woman who
took my virginity. She
promised she would be
gentle. She lied.””