True Story: A Couple on Their Engagement Photo Shoot Stumbled Upon a Black Metal Band in the Woods

A recently engaged couple, out in the wild near Holy Jim Canyon, California for a photo shoot to announce their love to the world, encountered something most unexpected: a black metal band, in full corpse point, taking a promo shoot of their own. So they did what any sensible couple would do: combined both photoshoots into one and took a bunch of incredible, epic and dramatic engagement shots!

Though this reads like something you’d see on music culture parody site The Hard Times, it actually happened: ABC News was the first to pick up on the story.

The couple, John Awesome (yes, really) and Nydia Hernandez, were all too happy to roll with the punches:

During the last part of the session, we noticed a few guys with some corpse paint makeup on sitting at a nearby bench blaring out some black metal music. We just randomly thought it would be a funny idea if we could get them to be a part of our engagement shoot. So we approached them and asked and they more than happy to accept! Super nice people. I seriously can’t make this stuff up.

The band, Coldvoid, had been out in the woods to take advantage of the night’s full moon, and they had all sorts of props with them to make the photos even more over-the-top: a candelabrum, nails and swords. Photographer Janet Wheeland was all too happy to oblige.

Check out some of Wheeland’s photos below, and listen to Coldvoid’s recently released EP Verses from the Deceased. Anyone hoping to crash the Awesome/Hernandez wedding will need to wait until fall of 2017.