Italian symphonic/death metal band Fleshgod Apocalypse married two of their fans onstage during a recent show.
The five-piece – who are currently playing across North America on the Chaos & Carnage tour with Cradle Of Filth, Dying Fetus and others – uploaded footage to social media on Wednesday (May 7) showing singer/bassist Francesco Paoli overseeing the “ceremony”.
The clip was recorded at an undisclosed date on the ongoing tour, and it depicts Paoli wedding fans Joseph and Kayla in front of a packed auditorium.
“It’s the first time I’m a priest,” the face-painted frontman jokes.
He then takes the “I do”’s from the couple before declaring, “By the power of music and death metal, I pronounce you husband and wife!”
Watch the wholesome video below.
Surprisingly, this isn’t the first tying of the knot to take place during a metal show. In 2014, a Machine Head fan proposed to his girlfriend mid-concert, and singer/guitarist Robb Flynn brought the couple onstage to exchange some rather vulgar vows.
Plus, last month, a couple got hitched in the moshpit at a Cannibal Corpse concert.
Fleshgod Apocalypse started in 2007 in Perugia, Italy, and are world-famous for their take on death metal, which employs classical strings and operatic soprano vocals. The band perform in 17th-century-style costumes and ghoulish make-up.
They released their latest album, Opera, last year to critical acclaim, including a glowing four-star review from Metal Hammer. The magazine wrote: “Opera is Fleshgod Apocalypse’s most engrossing work lyrically and thematically, and that depth is accompanied by the most interesting music of their career.”
The album is a concept piece inspired by a near-death experience Paoli endured in 2021. The musician fell while mountain-climbing in Italy, breaking or fracturing dozens of bones, and suffering nerve damage and internal bleeding. He was able to make a near-total recovery through surgeries and physical therapy.
Paoli spoke about the accident in-depth during a Hammer interview last year and revealed that he came close to having his left arm amputated.
“[My doctors] wanted to just cut it off at first,” he told us. “But, then they found an incredible surgeon in Bologna that could handle it and I was transferred. They rebuilt my elbow in 12 hours and they did great! I lost the use of one nerve, and you have three nerves in your arm, so I lost sensitivity in about half my arm and about 70 percent of my movement in my left hand.”
Despite the nerve damage, Paoli was able to play both guitar and bass on Fleshgod Apocalypse’s latest album. “I figured out a different tuning, basically a drop tuning, that still let me do it,” he explained. “But most of the songwriting I actually did without an instrument. I just started singing it.”
The Chaos & Carnage tour continues tonight (May 8) at The Crofoot in Pontiac, Michigan.
