By Andrew Bansal
[Videos by Arturo Gallegos]
August 19th 2014, Five Star Bar, Los Angeles CA: It’s been a great month of underground metal here at the Five Star Bar, and the venue along with the efforts of promoters HPLC and Thee Static Age did it yet again last Tuesday with another doom night, this one featuring Los Angeles amplification overlords Destroy Judas as headliners with touring support acts Usnea and Augurs, and local openers Wovoka.
Doors opened at 8 and the show began at 8:30 with LA sludge quartet Wovoka providing a crushing start to the evening’s dark musical rituals as they played a solid half an hour laden with Neurosis-worshipping gritty riffs and an element of melody that came through the twin guitar harmonies. The band is a very new entity but judging by this set it’s safe to say that they’d serve as a worthy participant in shows of this nature.
Wovoka full set:
Wovoka links: facebook | twitter | bandcamp
Oakland’s Augurs were up next, easily the fastest paced band of the show as they blended doom-death elements with a clearly discernible and easily enjoyable dosage of crust punk/grind as well as a touch of black metal. They possessed a strong stage presence and brought forth a refreshing variation from the music played during the rest of the evening.
Augurs full set:
Augurs links: facebook | bandcamp
Portland OR funeral doom quartet Usnea were next to take this stage and their set came across as completely contrasting to that of Augurs’, slowing the tempo down several fold, every single guitar note extended to resonate for an eternity. The clean, melodic notes on the guitar lent a haunting, hellish vibe to the surroundings here at the Five Star Bar, with a large majority of the attendees extremely appreciative of this Usnea’s performance, and most of them clearly seemed to be here mainly to see this band. Usnea formed in 2011 and having just been signed to Relapse Records, they look poised to become yet another great band hailing from the great city of Portland.
Usnea full set:
Usnea links: facebook | bandcamp
And lastly, it was the turn of Destroy Judas to once again level this place into the ground with their great wall of doom-laden amplification. Aside from the sonic devastation, the visual aspect is a key portion of their live show, as sequences of images are projected onto a screen in the stage backdrop while the band plays music to make sense of the scenery. But on this occasion, their projector seemed to fail on them at the last minute and they were left with no option but to play their set without visuals. While setting up they had asked all lights to be turned down to lay complete focus on the projections, but even once that fell through, the venue didn’t turn on the stage lighting and used a flashing mob/disco type light facing the stage and positioned behind the audience. This light (as you can see in the video below) turned out be more an annoyance than anything else, and both the band and the audience would have probably been better off without it. But anyhow, Destroy Judas soldiered on and played their set, proving that their music holds strong on its own and has the power to captivate. Their next gig is at the Airliner on September 6th, and hopefully it’ll be a more accurate representation of their live show, complete with visual projections.
Overall, good times were had yet again at the Five Star Bar with these great doom bands that represented the genre excellently and enhanced every attendee’s appreciation for it.
Destroy Judas full set (check out Arturo Gallegos’ YouTube channel for more videos from local LA/OC shows):
Destroy Judas links: facebook | twitter | bandcamp
HPLC links: facebook
Thee Static Age links: website | facebook
Five Star Bar links: website | facebook | twitter