Metalmoments – 5 years anniversary!

With October 2012, the 5th birthday of Metalmoments came and went.
In accordance with our regular lateness (wink wink), we haven’t begun writing an article about this until November 2012 and tried hard to finish it before the end of the year...

So where did it all begin?
Well, in all honesty, and as some of you might even remember if you’ve been around for long enough, Metalmoments is even older than the 5 years we are now celebrating. In the beginning though, it was merely a web-gallery made to satisfy the long-time interest of Lunah Lauridsen to take photos of metal concerts, and a growing interest on her side in web programming.
At this point, Metalmoments was not its own site but rather a sub-gallery to Lauridsen’s main photo site (yes, she does shoot other things as well); heck, in the beginning it didn’t even have its own name! Time went by though, and as the interest grew, so did the site; more and more photo-shoots were uploaded, and more and more design and functions were added to the site. In the end, there was nothing for but to let Metalmoments leave the nest and try its own wings.

In September 2007, the Metalmoments became a site all on its own, and in October it took on the shape we know and love today, with the adding of Tobias Nilsson (that’s me) as a writer.
I still remember being convinced into doing reviews for the site with the words that it wouldn’t take up much of my time, and I wouldn’t be called out very often. Thus, after accepting, I was quickly sent off to Germany for a double feature of Pain in Hamburg and Berlin. It was already decided that contrary to the popular way of doing things, what with writing a few lines of every band in the same review, we would give each and every band their own complete review; this would work best with the way the site was set up, and would give best possible coverage for each band.
Well, that was six reviews put on my desk in two days as Pain had two support bands at each venue, Zonaria (in both places), Big Boy (Hamburg) and Absolute (Berlin), and let me assure you that things haven’t exactly slowed down since!
Over the years, Metalmoments have also grown branches into other platforms; the first one was MySpace, a place which has seen a great many design changes over the years, and later on Facebook, which of course haven’t seen that many changes on its looks. At some point, we will of course add links to these places to our main site to tie it all together, but for now it would seem that they all live happy and exciting lives by themselves.

If I (well, Lauridsen as well for that sake) look past the constant burning stress of trying to better our site for your enhanced enjoyment, and the seemingly never-ending line of shows and festivals that needs be seen, it has actually been a very fun ride so far!
There have been so many great shows over the years (and some not so great of course), which we have seen because of Metalmoments. Metalmoments have also brought us to so many new places around Europe that we possibly would never have seen if it wasn’t for this site. The festivals we have visited, the concerts seen, the beers drunk – ah, what a life it has been!
Because of Metalmoments, we have also met a lot of wonderful people from all over; some of them have graciously lent a hand and a pen to our site as guest writers, others have shared good times with us even though they worked for the enemy (rival sites/magazines), and others still have just been simply great because they have been present and shared and added to the feeling and metal spirit around the world. These people are you, our dear and valued readers, so go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back or raise a Viking horn, whatever suits you the best, because you are simply awesome!

Sitting here reminiscing, it dawns on me that if there is one popular thing that Metalmoments have never done, it is a list. Well, that’s not going to happen now either, not really anyway. We would however like to mention a few of the things that have stuck with us the most so far, and we hope you’ll enjoy it.

If I, Tobias, am to highlight only one concert as the best one ever, I’ll have to chose one which we didn’t actually attend in the capacity of Metalmoments, even though a set of photos and a review ended up at the site afterwards as it was simply too good to pass up!
I am talking about a time in 2011 when Roger Waters visited Copenhagen to perform a grand scale production of The Wall!
The sheer magnitude of this completely blew me away, and having had The Wall as a long time favourite of Pink Floyd’s work also did its part to heighten this to a truly magical event!
But, I also want to express my gratitude for the multitude of bands that I did not know, and still wouldn’t had it not been for the fact that Metalmoments had brought me to the shows. Orphaned Land, Turisas, Hollenthon are all in heavy rotation on my hifi nowadays, and Death Angel, Huldre and Forbidden are bands I certainly wouldn’t stay away from if I was given more opportunities to see them in the future! These names are of course only the tip of the iceberg, the real amount of bands that this site has helped out with introducing me to is too high to calculate.
Of course there have been bad shows as well, and if you are an avid reader of our site (which of course you are), you will be familiar with many of these, but one tends to only see positive images in the rear-view mirror, and so I will stick to those mentioned above.

I know Lunah agrees with on this, but after asking there are a few notes she’d like to add as her own as well.
She told me that one of the best things Metalmoments have provided her with is getting to see concert from another angle, or in another perspective if you will. You see, concerts aren’t all about a smashing sound and the right setlist, but it’s also to a very large degree dependent on the attitude of the band. By being a photographer, you notice that this particular aspect becomes particularly important, and that whether a band has been in the mood or not really shows up on the photographs.
Also, on a more hands on note, how could I (Lunah) go without mentioning one of the most gratifying metal moments in my career so far? ‘Twas back in 2008, just leading up to New Years (like now...), and we were in Bochum, Germany, to cover the four day Amon Amarth marathon at the Zeche – well, camera in hand I did my best to shoot as many good pics as possible of course to show you guys, but time the outcome became different than what I could ever have imagined! You see, it wasn’t you, our dear readers, who were following our day to day retelling of the shows, but the guys from Amon Amarth were doing so as well! Not only did they follow what we did, but they liked the photos to such a degree that they asked if they could use my photos in the upcoming re-releases of their four first albums! I guess you can figure out the answer to that one without thinking too long about it, can’t you?
I tell you, for a whole year after that it was like Christmas for me every time a new album was released and I could rush to the CD store to have a look at what awaited inside the booklet. Hard to beat that, you can imagine!

Now, to conclude this little birthday greeting, we, the staff of Metalmoments, wishes once again to extend a sincere and heartfelt cheers to you, our dear readers, for sticking with us for so long, and hope to have you popping in every now and then for the next five years as well.
We bang our heads and raise our horns to you!

Sincerely /
Lunah Lauridsen – Photography
Tobias Nilsson – Reviewing

Latest uploads: