The Engram power or the voluntary mastery of space and time
Review of the concert Beherit in Colombia
Images and words: Juan Sabbath (www.bsabbath.com)
Venue: Ace of Spades (Bogotá)
Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
Organization: Colombian Shows
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One of the traits that identifies the human species, aside from perversity and stupidity, is the ability to create symbolic universes that allow us to travel through time. That is, to imagine, like no other species, future or past roles and temporalities that we can experience as part of our very existence. That's why Borges was right: imagination is part of concrete reality. Pessoa also knew it: true reality is what we dream. Those of us who love music know firsthand the power of this art form to create symbolic universes through composition, with forms and sounds that allow us to manipulate time and experiences at will. The power of the engram. This power is especially evident in black metal, and Beherit's performance in Colombia demonstrated that good organization makes this effect possible: a direct journey back to 1993.
The sound, almost identical to that of analog recordings, and the band's staging made it possible to experience what no one imagined: to experience the essence of black metal at the time of its emergence. Beherit was one of those bands that, in the 1990s, made it easy to believe that Satanism was a serious matter. Their music manifested a truly Satanic aura that, after 30 years, few bands manage to achieve. Beyond the photographic record of young people with inverted crosses, the encounter with Beherit's music was the real—live—experience of a Satanic ritual, a cosmic trance with higher levels of pagan, anti-Christian, transcendental mysticism. The power of their music has not been diminished by years of superficial copying of this powerful genre. Furthermore, they were preceded by an act of equal power, fellow Finnish band Black Beast, heirs to the old school a decade later, proving that a year is just a number, that creation can be faithful to its legacy at any moment in history.
The world is will and representation, Schopenhauer accurately dictated. That will and that representation create realities, as the great books of ritual magic written since forgotten times insist. With these elements, Beherit's concert in Colombia was an astral projection to other eras, to other realities. The era in which black metal was truly perceived as evil, transgressive... satanic. The passage of history and the excessive familiarization of the genre has diminished that impact, but the listener's will, channeled through an excellent staging (lights and sound), allows us to relive lost eras, destroyed by commercial artifice. And that temporal journey was experienced with full intensity on the night of May 16th.
Beherit had never visited Colombia; a band so important to the genre had disbanded, had leaned toward other musical paths, was considered lost, but was guarded like those secret treasures that remain unchanged thanks to the magic of sound recording, the importance of analog material. Every time we've had a mystical connection with Beherit's music, with the Finnish sound, so slowed down, ritualistic, lacking speed but with atmosphere, every time we've experienced that, we could only imagine what it would be like to see it live. And—each time—we saw that possibility more distant. A positive effect of the banalization of black metal, and the popularization of metal in general, is that it has allowed it to revitalize a market and motivate many bands to return to the path. Living off past glories? Yes, but who cares? It's better to have the chance to relive the mystical essence of black metal than to be condemned to consuming their ridiculous copies. And that possibility was offered by Colombian Shows with Beherit's presence in Colombia.
At the end of the concert, the aura of the nineties was felt; the audience still couldn't believe what had been accomplished, that they had witnessed the unthinkable band, the elusive beast. It was easy to hear that it was one of the best black metal concerts in the history of this country. I have no doubt about it. I repeat: the sound and staging worked perfectly, to the point that it was easy to imagine that Sodomatic Slaughter (Jari Pirinen) and Nuclear Holocaust Vengeance (Marko Laiho) were still those youngsters advanced in the ways of evil. The execution of the repertoire based on their seminal "Drawing Down the Moon" (1993) only increased the trance song after song and gave the certainty that the next one would be better. And so it was. I want to give my word, dear reader, that what has been expressed up to this point is not the product of a subtle transaction between the press and the organization, but is the exclusive result of lived experience. Given this, it is impossible to find negative or criticizable points. In my experience and that of many, physical time succumbed to ritual time; imagination transported us fully. For those of us who connected with this trance, the world was pure will and representation. That prevents all criticism and renders objective judgment useless. Taking distance would have been a real waste. May the great beast condemn the objective ones who pose as impartial. Here I have recorded the power of the engram, which allows the human animal to dominate space and time at will, as it manifested itself that night.
Juan Sabbath. Bogotá, 22 de mayo de 2025
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