E-Mail This Article to a Friend URBAN EYE Metalheads, photogs, and Fountains of who? BY CAMILLE DODERO

The labyrinthine basement of the Somerville Armory really should be haunted. After all, it’s a cobwebby maze of narrow tunnels, creaky staircases, and exposed-brick walls that look like military catacombs pillaged during an invasion. There is a corroded group shower, a shadowy ammo stockroom with two empty vaults, and a firing range with bullet dents forming ghostly figures on a dead-end back wall. There’s even an artillery-training dunce list etched outside the shooting gallery’s entrance, dated "6/24/67" and titled HONOR ROLL/FUCK UP SQD above rank-prefixed names like "PVT Milne" and "SP-4 Kakles." Above all, it’s icebox chilly down there — a symptom of supernatural activity, if you believe paranormal experts.

But Brookline photographer Pia Schachter swears the cellar isn’t bewitched. A year ago, the circa-1902 Armory was auctioned off to Joseph and Nabil Sater, owners of Cambridge’s Middle East Club, who won approval last November from the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals to transform the historical structure into artists’ lofts and a performance-arts space. For about a month, Schachter photographed the premises for the building’s new owners and the Somerville Historical Society. "If anyone should know if this place is haunted, it would be me," she said. Although the abandoned site scared her enough that she wielded sage in one hand and a stun gun in the other, she never encountered any creepy apparitions. "I was ghost hunting and really expecting to find dead bodies, and I didn’t find one." Not even any rats or bugs.

"The basement’s really fucked-up and spooky, but it’s not haunted," she insisted to a group of 30-plus people this past Sunday afternoon, standing in the Armory’s football-field-size gymnasium. With the help of location supervisor Johnny DeMasi, Schachter had brought everyone together for a "one-day photo festival" — an April afternoon when she’d handpicked a manageable crew of photographers and models to have the run of the place. "The goal of this session is to illustrate how we all can create some killer visual work without spending a friggin dime," wrote Schachter in an e-mailed invitation. "No one gets charged, no one pays to play, photographers get a chance to get hot models in an amazing location and models get new images from a variety of photographers."

Schachter calls herself a "metalhead den mother" — "Defiance," her photo show held at the Allston Skirt Gallery last November, was all metalhead portraits. So naturally many of the models and shooters were plucked from the scene, along with a few commercial photographers. Around one in the afternoon, as people staked out dusty nooks in the enormous building, New Hampshire music photographer Carina Mastrocola corralled her volunteer gang of visual subjects: Hekseri, a Boston-area black-metal trio in need of promo shots, and six other black-clad "metal boys" from New England bands such as A Terrible Night for a Curse, Shroud of Bereavement, and Porphyria. As Mastrocola snapped shots, they flashed the metal horns. They banged their heads. They busted out a flying V guitar and used it as a prop. Instead of "Say cheese!", they joked, "Everybody be grim and necro!"

Meanwhile, Schachter was in a stairwell shooting young women in white nighties — her iconic theme for the day, meant to capture "that abandoned, abducted look." As a young woman named Arsenic emerged from a broom closet, women in corsets, vinyl dresses, and petticoats crept around like cats. Later, when Mastrocola went by with her metal-boy squad, Schachter offered to take "a group male metalhead shot — my favorite." She sighed. "I said I was only going to shoot girls today. But I can’t resist a roomful of longhairs."

Sometime after three, a makeup artist named Meredith daubed foundation on Noelle — lead singer from the Waltham rock band Damone — who was about to slip into a virginal nightgown. Two rooms away, the five-man metal band Diecast lined up menacingly, hands in pockets, as a commercial photographer shot their portrait.

But perhaps the strangest event of the day occurred when snarky power-pop foursome Fountains of Wayne showed up. In town to headline the Agganis Arena for Boston University’s student-sponsored "Springfest," they’d come to meet up with Joel W. Benjamin, a Boston-area photographer who’s taken the band’s press shots in the past. In between set-up shots, singer/guitarist Chris Collingwood lurked around, eating a sub and looking cross. Guitarist Jody Porter kept changing shirts. Co-frontman Adam Schlesinger, amused by the garter-belted cast of slinky models, whispered to drummer Brian Young. "There’s a six-foot goth woman walking around," he said, referring to Aprella, a blue-green-haired fetish model in a black corset, elbow-length gloves, and garter belts. "Should we do something with her when we’re done?" She agreed politely to pose with them.

"What’s your band?" she asked.

"Fountains of Wayne," offered Young.

"Oh," Aprella said flatly, "I think I’ve heard of you."

Few others seemed to notice or care that Fountains of Wayne were there. Model Samantha Nerad, 20, a pale redhead in a black Matrix-style cloak who just moved here from Florida, ignored them when they passed. Nerad likes Boston so far — people don’t ask her if she’s a vampire here. As for today, she said, it had been fun. Though it had nothing to do with the famous mom-lusters in the house. "This is the first time I’ve gotten to deal with people in a very long time," she explained matter-of-factly. "This is exactly my kind of thing."

Pia Schachter will curate an Armory-themed photo show at the Zeitgeist Gallery, 1353 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, in May. An opening is scheduled for May 7. Call (617) 876-6060.