The Skull Gets Hollywood In Trouble

By Andrew Bansal

October 19th 2013, Loaded Rock Bar, Hollywood CA: For those unfamiliar, The Skull was formed in early 2012 by vocalist Eric Wagner, bassist Ron Holzner and and drummer Jeff Olson, three former members of legendary Chicago doom metal band Trouble. It started out as an attempt to bring Trouble’s first two albums ‘Psalm 9’ and ‘The Skull’ back to life but eventually led to new material being written by the group. Sometime after the birth of the band, Jeff Olson announced his departure but ended up making a return this year. Together with guitarists Lothar Keller and Michael Carpenter, they set out to play some shows and came down to the West Coast, visiting the Loaded Rock Bar in the heart of Hollywood last night. Having been to that place a couple of times in the recent past I’ve got to say I’m not a fan of Loaded Rock Bar, and it was a strange setting for The Skull to play here, to be honest. But regardless, plenty of Trouble fans were in attendance to witness this performance, which promised to be a slab of glorious classic doom.

The show started in the early evening but there was a long, long wait before the headline act could take the stage. Finally at half past midnight, the five members of The Skull appeared on the extremely tiny Loaded stage and began their 60-minute set. The monitors on stage were apparently of no use to the band as they kept saying they ‘couldn’t hear shit’ up there, but the sound coming out from the system onto the audience was not bad at all, and it was a testimony to the band’s professionalism and sheer musical skill to be able to cohesively play their set despite the monitor issues. The amount of pot smoke in the room, as expected, was quite high and amidst the fog that constantly enveloped him, Eric Wagner delivered some killer vocals on those Trouble classics. There was barely enough room for these five dudes to hold their positions on what has to be the smallest stage in Los Angeles, but they soldiered on, and their music sounded absolutely massive. Doom at its purest best.

Although the late end to the show at 1:35 AM wasn’t so much of an issue as it was a Saturday night, I only wish The Skull could have started their set earlier than when they did. But the biggest pity was to not be able to see Jeff Olson in action. With the miniscule size of that stage, the members in the foreground completely covered the drum kit and Olson was hidden into obscurity for the entirety of the performance. Thankfully at least, his drum sound was coming through loud and clear, and it was a real treat for Trouble fans to hear him do his thing.

Keller and Carpenter’s guitars sounded fantastic, very dynamic with the combination of clean harmonies and heavy riffs, and of course, bassist Ron Holzner laid down the bottom end with Olson. The audience was loving every moment of it. The turnout couldn’t have been more than 100, but they all packed in as close to the stage as they possibly could, and as much as I dislike this place, when a great band like The Skull is on stage, the atmosphere inside it isn’t bad whatsoever. But still, I would have preferred seeing the band at some place more legit in every possible sense. With that said, it was a great feeling to have witnessed a piece of rock history being recreated with such perfection by these classy musicians. Here’s to more LA gigs by The Skull in the near future.

Visit The Skull on the web at:
TheSkullUSA.com
facebook.com/TroubleTheSkull
twitter.com/TroubleTheSkull

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