Metal Assault: Gig Reviews

By Andrew Bansal

Day 1, August 1st 2013:

House of Blues, West Hollywood CA: The annual Sunset Strip Music Festival kicked off its 2013 edition last evening at the House of Blues, with a short presentation ceremony for this year’s honoree, the one and only Joan Jett, and for the first time ever, a SSMF honoree performed a full set on the Thursday of the festival as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts took the House of Blues stage much to the delight of the crowd gathered here. Continue reading “Sunset Strip Music Festival 2013”

By Andrew Bansal

July 30th 2013, The Roxy, West Hollywood CA: Swedish/Danish power metal band Amaranthe are currently on their first ever US headline tour, along with Canadian heavy metal rising force Kobra & The Lotus as the support act. The tour stopped by at what’s perhaps become West Hollywood’s most frequented venue for metalheads, the Roxy Theatre. Along with the two touring bands, this show had local support from Sirion and Sign Of Sirin. Except for Sirion I had not seen any of these bands before, so just like the Into Eternity show I had attended last Saturday at the Joint, I had no expectations from this show and was going in with a completely open mind, waiting and hoping to be pleasantly surprised by at least some of these bands’ performances. Continue reading “Amaranthe Headlines The Roxy”

By Andrew Bansal

July 27th 2013, The Joint, Los Angeles CA: It was a fairly long time ago when I last saw Canadian metal band Into Eternity perform on an LA stage, as main support act to Iced Earth at the Wiltern in 2008. Ironically, their then vocalist Stu Block joined Iced Earth a couple of years ago and has been touring worldwide with them ever since, while Into Eternity were left stranded, looking for a new vocalist and attempting to start anew. It finally happened for them recently as touring vocalist Amanda Kiernan became the full-time singer and currently they are on a short US tour running into some Canada dates. The tour included a comeback LA gig at the Joint last night. Being such a different band now as compared to 2008 with a female lead vocalist and a new drummer, I really didn’t know what to expect from Into Eternity but went to check out the show anyway, and I definitely do not regret doing so. Continue reading “Into Eternity Rocks The Joint”

By Corey Clark

July 24th 2013, Chain Reaction, Anaheim CA: Ahh sweet Chain Reaction. Host to many shoulder-to-shoulder hardcore shows in my youth. Scene girls, slam dancers, small dudes screaming: you know the drill.

Tonight’s first metal warriors were Children of God. Kind of a nice imitation of Neurosis except they’re all like 20 years younger. I would posit that no doom and gloom band has truly earned its stripes until they’ve been bent over by the road for at least a decade. And lord, these youngins are just fresh off the boat! All this is not to say that their music isn’t pretty great though. The basswork was frantic and the guitars were appropriately crunchy. They suitably took time out from the gloom for some atmospheric interludes. Only to smack us down with the nastiest curdling riffs before we became pacified. With a little sprinkle of impassioned grunts an’ howls we’ve got ourselves a pretty decent young band! Continue reading “Shai Hulud & Early Graves Play At Anaheim’s Chain Reaction”

By Andrew Bansal

July 24th 2013, The Whisky, West Hollywood CA: A.L.I.V.E.! is an all-star tribute to 70s era KISS, featuring Guns N’ Roses guitarist Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal, Rex Brown of Pantera fame, his Kill Devil Hill band mate Mark Zavon on guitar, and the tireless and ever-awesome Brian Tichy on drums. The band played a show at the Viper Room at the beginning of this month, and were back at the Sunset Strip, this time at the Whisky in celebration of Rex Brown’s birthday week. Having missed that Viper Room show, I had absolutely no intention of missing this one. The calibre of these musicians as individuals is quite obvious and well-known, but it remained to be seen whether they would be able to create a group dynamic and pull off the KISS songs the way they’re supposed to be played. Continue reading “‘A.L.I.V.E.!’ Featuring Bumblefoot, Rex Brown, Brian Tichy & Mark Zavon Perform At The Whisky”

By Andrew Bansal
[Live photos by Ronnie Lyon] 

July 20th 2013, The Viper Room, West Hollywood CA: Moby Dicks, a Los Angeles-based all-star tribute to Led Zeppelin, is led by Brian Tichy on drums and features in its ranks James Lomenzo on bass, Stephen LeBlanc on keyboards, Brent Woods on guitar and Chas West on vocals. This group of musicians took the Viper Room stage last night for a recreation of Led Zeppelin’s 1977 Day On The Green concert in Oakland, which turned out to be the band’s last show in the US. Zeppelin played a long 3-hour show on that occasion, and it was going to be a challenge to successfully emulate that. But this band took upon the task, hitting the stage at around 10:15. Continue reading “Moby Dicks At Viper Room: A Recreation Of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Day On The Green’ Set”