By Lisa Burke
March 24th 2016, The Viper Room, West Hollywood CA: Last Thursday March 24th 2016, I attended the Viper room for yet another quality line up at this venue featuring four great bands Black Tusk, Holy Grail, The Well and Ironaut. Black Tusk, Holy Grail and The Well were on tour together and with me prior to this night not really familiar with Black Tusk, I have to say I was super impressed and couldn’t imagine a more perfect pairing of bands, combining them and Holy Grail in a room together.
Every time I see Holy Grail not headlining, I usually wish they were headlining because it’s a hard act to follow, yet on this night Black Tusk pulled it off brilliantly. Ironaut has been playing a fair amount of shows recently and since the chief of Metal Assault himself was in attendance at their last show in Long Beach just three days prior to this event, I will refrain from repeating anything and I advise you to read the review of the Long Beach show for more details. I will say this was a good bill for them to be on, and if you caught them you were not disappointed. Hopefully at the next show someone will be kind enough to include their name on the advertising poster despite them being the only band not on the tour package, since they are also a legit band and not a six o’ clock pay-to-play act at the Whisky on a Monday night, who probably got more credit in that sense.
Moving on to Austin, Texas trio The Well for some heavy stoner psychedelic female-fronted rock ‘n roll goodness, a decent time ensued. I’ve been attending quite a number of shows in this genre lately, so I’m probably extra critical, but I find it necessary to have a commanding uniqueness to stay afloat in this competitive world. The goal should always be to make a big wave in a calm sea because no one can ignore that when it’s right in front of them. These guys were almost there with some really beautiful moments that I only wish soared just a bit higher. The singer has it all with her alluring stage presence and vocal delivery, plus some ass-kicking bass skills and techniques. There were great moments of guitar jamming, and the drums were precise. I usually see the singer pick up a tambourine but this time it was the drummer who did so and I found that to be somehow refreshing. All in all, a well-performed set, and I found myself a fan of the last song with its slightly heavier, faster and more psychedelic qualities as opposed to a few of the previous more mellow and bluesy tunes. The levels were a bit off and unfortunately I couldn’t really hear the back up vocals throughout the set, despite the singer’s best efforts asking for it to be fixed. I do always like the idea of harmonizing vocals and I’m sure it was a good effect none the less. For some strange reason it was around this time that for a minute of looking around the room at the audience I had to wonder if it was national Poser day or what, because I found myself surrounded by a stray man bun or two, a dude in a Taylor Swift shirt who probably didn’t know he was silently screaming please beat me up in the pit, unsurprising multitudes of plaid shirts, and the ever-annoying hat that said ‘Glamel Toe’. I quickly rectified being disturbed by this fashion disaster madness by head-banging my face off to the awesomeness that is Holy Grail.
There is some power metal happening here with the lyrics and some of the guitar riffs, along with some thrashy old school heavy metal in the mix as well, and I can’t get enough of Holy Grail. They keep touring and making one top-quality album after another, and every time I see them is better than the last. Their new song ‘Crystal King’ was a big success to me, off of their newest album ‘Times Of Pride And Peril’ and it’s the kind of song that makes you excited to hear the whole album. Other favorites were ‘Sudden Death’ , ‘Call Of Valhalla’, and my absolute favorite to see live, ‘Ride The Void’. On this night it happened to be vocalist James Luna’s “18th birthday”, as it was shouted out by guitarist Eli Santana, and we all sung happy birthday to him mid-set while another shoutout happened of “Happy Birthday you fuck”. Now if you don’t know the heavy metal antics of James Luna, it goes something along the lines of high-pitched quality vocal screams, lots of hair whipping, and really fun and fast lyrics with an abundance of sky punching while still keeping his badass leather gauntlets in check. While this is happening, the guitar player is jamming out ridiculously fun riffs and jumping around stage in a purely professional way, while the bassist’s hair is whipping all over the stage as he cranks out some seriously heavy bass riffage, and the wild drumming persists to tie it all together and give them the illusion of some semblance of sanity among the chaos. I always walk away from their set with much bigger wilder hair than when I started and much less stress as well. It’s basically a ‘I have bigger hair and I just don’t even care’ kind of a band that you are a fool to miss seeing live.
Finally on to the best surprise of the night, Savannah, Georgia trio Black Tusk arrived to throw some ridiculously fun, down-and-dirty thrashy punky sludge in my face and I didn’t complain once. A little side note of sad history on these guys is that they lost their bass player to a tragic motorcycle accident two years ago and have since courageously moved forward with a new touring bass player who came to them from Kylesa and brings a great balance of high energy into the already highest levels of energy that existed before. If you want to know how much energy they have on a scale of one to ten, I give them a twelve. I love when bands mix genres together in such a way that it becomes unique, and you better believe this band has accomplished that and so much more. I loved everything off their new album ‘Pillars Of Ash’, and ‘Gods On Vacation’ was probably my favorite. The drumming was really up to speed and the raw dirtiness in the sound is something I normally am not into, but the way it was presented was just so intentional and mixed in such a thrashy fun old-school punk way that I couldn’t get enough. The best surprise of this entire surprise set was when James Luna and Eli Santana from Holy Grail made a cameo appearance back on the stage with Black Tusk for their last song which was a cover of ‘Reckless Life’ by Guns ‘N Roses. The bottom line here is that it was totally fun and totally worth every minute of my time spent for this entire show, and if you can catch the remaining dates of this tour do it because these guys and girl will rock your face off.
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Black Tusk + The Well remaining tour dates:
4/01 Indianapolis, IN @ 5th Quarter
4/02 Newport, KY @ Southgate House
4/03 Atlanta, GA @ Drunken Unicorn (Black Tusk only)