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Veteran Midwestern Heavy Metal Musician: If you’ve ever wondered what the differences are between heavy metal sub-genres death metal, brutal technical death metal, and black metal, check out the relentlessly creative, prolific and multi-faceted career of Bernardo “Burns” Mendia. Two decades after launching his career as a guitarist from ages 16-25 with Chicago-based technical death/thrash metal band Purge, the Windy City bred, Southern Wisconsin-based musician is currently active with three hard gigging and touring units. He’s the drummer for Inner Decay (death metal) and Luciferum (black metal), and guitarist and vocalist for Celestial Serpent (brutal technical death metal). A self-taught guitarist since age 12, Mendia started to play drums at 28 after Rotting Tomb, the Viking metal band he joined, couldn’t find a skilled drummer. He developed his skills over many years playing with Milwaukee technical death metal band Ancient Entities—and after hundreds of shows throughout the country over the years, recently made his recording debut on the band’s 2024 album Echoes of Annihilation.
On Heavy Metal Drumming: “When Rotting Tomb couldn’t find a drummer, and they had a drum set in their rehearsal space, I saw it as a great excuse to learn the drums. Along the way, while learning that drumming is a lot harder than playing guitar, I’ve realized that a great metal drummer has to be extremely disciplined, must maintain their gear and practice constantly, or at least several times a week, maintaining relaxation and working with a metronome. Everyone in the band is falling back on you so you have to be 100 percent on your game. It’s a million times harder to play extreme metal than basic rock beats and death metal is high speed and has to have extremely precise sounds.”
Necro Productions: Mendia is also deeply involved in multiple sub-genres of heavy metal as the founder of Necro Productions, a leading Midwestern based independent promotion company for which he wears multiple hats—including booking agent, show promoter, live, studio audio engineer and, most recently, videographer. He started out as a DIY entity in 2012, booking local shows so his and friends’ bands could perform live more consistently. A few years ago, he began investing in an array of speakers, mics and cables and merged that service into live sound production. His expertise in this area allowed him to host his own shows and provide his own sound while also serving as a first call “sound guy” running their house sound for many other metal bands. In addition to live audio and studio audio recordings, he now does videography with high quality cinema cameras (including a Sony FX 3 Cinemaline) to create promotional videos and live concert DVDs. He now travels to festivals all around the country to do live sound and video shoots, in addition to working with many European metal bands. Most recently, he launched an offshoot company called Celestial Film Productions for mainstream music clients.
Contact Necro Productions 224-637-4715
