Chicago metalcore band Veil of Maya invaded the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, CA halfway into their winter tour with several acts based on the locations that they were playing at.

On this night I got inside in time to shoot the band before them called AngelMaker. This was the first metalcore concert I’ve ever shot and I hit the pit with the plan of shooting 24-70mm on the first two songs and 70-20mm on the 3rd and throughout the house.

It was a dangerous territory in the pit tonight. Both bands encouraged crowd surfing and to push and shove but to pick up their fellow man when they got knocked down. In the middle of the second song, one guy surfing to the front laid out two photographers right in the middle down to the floor, which resulted in security temporarily clearing the photographers out of the pit. I was near the left side of the pit anticipating that this was going to happen. Fortunately, my fellow photographers did not get hurt and their equipment did not get damaged.

I got some near-perfect shots out of vocalist Casey Tyson-Pearce. Very animated and his style is like a metalcore version of Danny Elfman.

Next up were the headliners from the windy city in an almost 80-minute headbanging performance. Their first two performances were the singles “Tokyo Chainsaw” and “Artificial Dose” . With the drummer Sam Applebaum far back there was a large empty space on stage for the band to roam all over the place which was an advantage to get good shots.

Bassist Danny Hauser was playful with the photographers and I got some good snaps out of it. Lead vocalist Lucas Magyar was a metal maestro. He brought a lot of showmanship to the LA crowd that night.

I have to be honest going in I am not a major fan of metalcore and that’s just a personal preference but it was an interesting and satisfying shoot and I had no regrets going. Would I shoot more metalcore in the future? Absolutely. I love shooting concerts with a lot of action and noise and this had both.

VEIL OF MAYA

ANGELMAKER