YOB, Dark Castle & Of The Horizon: A Killer Performance

Rating:

By Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal, August 5th 2011, The Echoplex, Los Angeles CA: I've always enjoyed going to the Echoplex not only because I've seen some great shows there, but also because the venue is very nicely maintained, boasting of an ambience anyone would feel comfortable in. The sound is perfect at all times which is undoubtedly a positive thing for any performing artist, but the one feature that makes this place unique in its own way is the on-stage lighting aided excellently by the projections that form the backdrop. The Earth show last month was the last time I was here, for what turned out to be a mind-bending experience. Besides the finesse of that group of amazing musicians, I think the overall ambience in the venue had a lot to do with turning that show into a success. And tonight the onus was on the bands YOB, Dark Castle and Of The Horizon to deliver an equally good show. This was a gig put on by Iron Room, a local organization that makes a lot of effort to keep the LA underground scene going, with unmissable shows like this one.

Of The Horizon started the show promptly at 9 o' clock with their brand of stoner doom metal. Their music was slow, heavy, and very much blues-oriented. By branding them as stoner doom metal I was only attempting to give you a general picture of what they sound like, in case you aren't familiar with them. But I didn't mean to say that they were one-dimensional, in fact far from it. There were tunes in their set that were quiet and extremely minimalist, wherein you could hear and absorb every single note. Tunes like these added a degree of uniqueness to their music, and captured the crowd's attention in a strange sort of way. There was pin-drop silence as everyone focussed on listening to the music being played. Of The Horizon's 40-minute set was very well done, and equally well received. The amazing backdrop made it all the more trippy, and I was already convinced that there couldn't have been a better venue to stage this show.

Florida-based psychedelic doom metal duo Dark Castle, made up of Stevie Floyd on guitar & vocals and Rob Shaffer on drums took the stage next, in what turned out to be a spellbinding 40 minutes for me, and for most others in the crowd, judging by the response the band got after they were done. They added a whole new angle to the show because of how different they were from the other two bands. Their music was definitely heavier than Of The Horizon, and probably as heavy as YOB, due to Stevie's extremely distorted and down-tuned guitar sound. The drumming was interesting in the sense that while Rob kept with the doom metal style for the most part, there were certain segments with fast-paced, almost black metal-type drumming. But the majority of the set was very slow, and things seemed like slow motion at one point which made it a powerful experience for the audience. Besides using that crazy amount of distortion on the guitar, the duo was using plenty of effects to go along with their vocals as well, and they displayed a good range at that aspect of their musicianship, with some very deep, low pitched segments to go along with vocals of higher pitch. With a performance as epic and spiritual as this, Dark Castle definitely stole the show and turned out to be my favorite band of the night.

These two excellent opening bands ensured that the crowd was in the right spirits as the mighty YOB, mighty in every sense of the word, took the stage. Before they began, frontman Mike Scheidt said a few humble words of thanks to the opening bands, to the person doing the lights, and to the crowd for coming out to the show. They started their set and from then on there was no turning back. While their sound was monstrously heavy, they mixed in the perfect amount of melody with some delightful, old school Sabbath-esque clean guitar riffs. The crowd kept getting more and more into the music, and by the time the band ended their main set, they were hungry for more. Indeed, there was an encore, and when it ended, I didn't even realize that an hour and 20 minutes had gone by since they took the stage. It was so engaging that it felt like a 40-minute set despite the fact that it was much longer. Rob from Dark Castle was pulling double duty as YOB's touring drummer, and did a commendable job at playing two pretty distinct sets, one after the other.

Just as bands experiment with their music from time to time, I'm not shy of a little experimentation once in a while, when it comes to my writing. Tonight was one such occasion, when I decided to go to a stoner metal show, without getting stoned. I just wanted to find out how good the music was without that feeling, and whether the term stoner metal necessarily means you have to be stoned to enjoy the music. And as you can tell from what I wrote about these bands, the power of the music combined with the psychedelia of the backdrop and lightning was sufficient to create a mental high, and I definitely ended up enjoying myself. But the next time I see any of these bands, I'll be sure to blaze it before going in to see how much difference it makes. Honestly, I wasn't even much familiar with any of these bands, and I went in purely because of the trust I had in the promoter and the venue. I'm glad I ended up going, and each of these three bands has a new fan.

A killer show from start to finish \m/

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