By Andrew Bansal
November 25th 2013, Skinny’s Lounge, North Hollywood CA: Presented by local underground promoter Lara Gladstone, Metal Mondays is a new series of events hosted by Skinny’s Lounge in North Hollywood, featuring local talent and taking place once a month. The very first Metal Monday was held on October 28, and last night was the second show of the series, featuring Lethal Dossage, Enrot, Circle Of Violence, Cliff Burton-era Metallica tribute band Cliff ‘Em All, and Tormenter. In addition to the live music, a raffle was also to be held, to give away Rush DVDs and a pair of tickets for Megadeth’s upcoming show at the Grove of Anaheim. With only a 5-dollar cover and easy access to the venue via the Los Angeles Metro Red Line, there was plenty of reason and motivation for the LA concert goer to give this gig a try.
I arrived at Skinny’s a few minutes past 8 PM, and upon entering, I was given three raffle tickets. The show began promptly at 8:15 with local thrashers Tormenter taking the stage with a 30-minute set. I go a long way back with this band, as I remember seeing their shows and communicating with them in the MySpace days. They did the pay-to-play Sunset Strip scene for a little while too but if my knowledge is accurate they haven’t played an LA/Hollywood show in a long time, so I was getting to see them after quite a while and was very much curious to find out if and how much they’ve progressed a band. I was glad to note that they got much better and tighter in their musicianship as compared to when I last saw them two years ago. They played some material off of their new EP ‘Phantom Time’ and those songs clearly showcased their musical development. They also brought out a cover of Testament’s ‘Over The Wall’. I and most people in this audience were quite blown away by it, such was the perfection with which it was performed, specially by singer Carlos Rodelo who did complete justice to Chuck Billy’s vocals. They ended their set with an awesome rendition of ‘HammerHead’, the one Tormenter song I always loved since the first time I saw them almost five years ago. Next they are playing at the Chain Reaction in Anaheim with Exhumed and Iron Reagan on December 11th. With the EP release and these shows, the near future looks bright for Tormenter and I’m glad to see all is well in the Tormenter camp.
Visit Tormenter on the web:
facebook.com/pages/Tormenter/141907425824307
twitter.com/xToRmenTeRx
youtube.com/user/ToRmenTeRTV
Next up was Cliff ‘Em All, a glorious tribute to the Cliff Burton era of Metallica, i.e. material from 1981-86. Before this show I had seen these guys thrice this year and twice in the past 30 days, but seeing and hearing early era Metallica played live by a good tribute band never gets old and you simply can’t go wrong with it. The Cliff ‘Em All boys set up their gear and disappeared while the ‘Ecstasy Of Gold’ intro played on the PA, following which the band reappeared and came out all guns blazing for half an hour of Metallica’s best, starting off with a one-two punch of ‘Battery’ and ‘Metal Militia’. As they were limited on time, there were no stoppages whatsoever as they went straight into ‘Creeping Death’. Then came the best part of the set, with Menno Verbaten turning his bass as loud as it could go and treating us with the Anesthesia bass solo. Menno is perhaps the most versatile bassist in the Los Angeles heavy music scene and I can’t imagine anybody else doing a better job at pulling off that solo. But instead of doing the usual bit where the rest of the band joins in for the latter half of ‘Anesthesia — Pulling Teeth’, Cliff ‘Em All dived into Orion and it was time for Metallica fans in the audience to lose their minds. The guitars were turned up nice and loud for this one, resulting in an extremely crisp, crystal clear rendition of Orion. The final portion of this short but hefty dose of Metallica came in the form of ‘Fight Fire With Fire’. With Metallica having turned themselves into such a horrible sounding live band these days, any tribute band sounds better than them, but even with that said, Cliff ‘Em All are as good as it gets when it comes to playing the early Metallica tunes. This was most probably their last show of 2013, but if you love Metallica and live in the area, catch Cliff ‘Em All in 2014.
Visit Cliff ‘Em All on the web:
facebook.com/CliffAllica
twitter.com/MetalliCliff
Set List:
Ecstasy Of Gold (intro)
1. Battery
2. Metal Militia
3. Creeping Death
4. Anesthesia (bass solo)
5. Orion
6. Fight Fire With Fire
Circle Of Violence was the next band to take this stage. I somehow had a bad feeling about them and wasn’t expecting anything great, but to my surprise they played a more than decent set and brought some solid modern American heavy metal to this stage, a la Lamb Of God, Hatebreed, Meshuggah and the likes. I was very distracted by the large number of hot women that crowded near the stage during this band’s set, but based on the portion of the set I was attentive to, I can say Mychael Burns’ vocals sounded killer, the guitar tones were great and I specially enjoyed the bass sound. For the first few minutes of the set, I couldn’t help but think Mychael Burns looked familiar and kept asking myself where I had seen him before. Then I realized I had seen him in a porno and was overcome with a feeling of self-loathing. You’ve watched too much porn in your life when as a straight guy you start recognizing male pornstars by face. Anyway, Circle Of Violence’s music was nothing original or out of the ordinary, but they executed this style of music very well and provided this audience with a good time. Clubs in the LA area should grab this band for as many shows as possible, because their own fans and friends were certainly sufficient in number to pack out this place all by themselves.
Visit Circle Of Violence on the web:
CircleOfViolence.com
facebook.com/CircleOfViolence
The LA metal scene suffers from a stigma, a disease, wherein the typical attendee only watches their friend’s band and does not care to stick around (or arrive early, depending on the set times) for the other bands. Sadly the same was happening here with each band’s set and barring a handful of people, no one watched all five bands. The place cleared out drastically after Circle Of Violence’s set and the four members of the next band Enrot were left staring at a vacant floor. Nonetheless, to their credit, they still put their best foot forward. This Huntington Beach-based band delivered an excellent performance with some killer grooves as the vocalist laid down some epic screams and banged his head full tilt, compelling a few in the audience to do the same. I dug their slower parts more as they hit harder and sounded heavier than the mid-tempo sections of their music. Just like Circle Of Violence, this band is clearly not aiming to reinvent the wheel but portrays groove-based heavy metal with just the right energy and level of musicianship, succeeding in creating a positive first impression on first timers like myself.
Visit Enrot on the web:
Enrot.com
facebook.com/EnrotMetal
And finally, the last band of the night was thrash trio Lethal Dossage who played a blistering Slayer and Teutonic thrash-inspired set of tunes. This is another band I had seen a long time ago and didn’t know what to expect from, but to a large extent I was pleasantly surprised by their performance. More than anything, their consistency of speed was impressive and I thought their guitarist ripped it up with some killer solos. Unlike most other local underground thrash bands where the vocals are terrible, Lethal Dossage frontman Richard Lopez’ vocal delivery was strong and is another positive aspect of this band. But if I had to point out shortcomings I would put my finger on two: firstly, their tunes are a little too repetitive and they need to infuse a lot more variety into their songwriting. Don’t get me wrong, their brand of relentless thrash is very enjoyable, but there was too much of the same without enough variation. And secondly, I didn’t think their sound as a three-piece band was full enough and could easily do with the addition of a rhythm guitar player. But with that said, they still put on a show worth rocking out to and for a band closing a Monday night show, they weren’t bad at all.
Visit Lethal Dossage on the web:
facebook.com/Lethal.Dossage
At the end of Lethal Dossage’s set, the promoter walked up to the stage and conducted the raffle, which was elongated by the predicament of quite a large portion of the raffle ticket holders having left the venue already. It took a while to find three winners for the prizes to be given out to, but we eventually got there. May be next time they should hand out the tickets just prior to the raffle to avoid having absentees while calling out winning numbers. But overall, I must say I’m pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this whole show turned out to be. The venue provided a cool setting as well, with a nice, cozy stage and good quality sound for the bands and a friendly ambiance for the audience. The turnout was absolutely great for a Monday night. Quite honestly, my intention of attending was to see Cliff ‘Em All but I’m glad I decided to check out all the other bands as well, and I give props to the promoter for putting together a lineup of bands where each one brought something different to the show and at the same time had enough in common with each other. The next Metal Monday at Skinny’s Lounge is already announced for December 30th. This series of events has Metal Assault’s full backing and I only hope for it to become a regular, long-term thing because LA’s metal scene needs good local shows like the one I witnessed last night.
Visit ‘Metal Mondays’ on the web:
facebook.com/MetalMondaysInLA
Visit Skinny’s Lounge on the web:
SkinnysLounge.com
facebook.com/pages/Skinnys-Lounge-in-NOHO/109244342457873
twitter.com/SkinnysNoHo