March 18th 2016, Amos’ Southend, Charlotte NC: The 2016 edition of the Decibel Magazine North American tour features Abbath as the headlining act along with High On Fire, Skeletonwitch and Tribulation in support, and began its four-week trek in Baltimore, Maryland on March 17th. While Southern California still awaits the arrival of these bands for gigs at The Observatory in Santa Ana (March 27th) and The Regent in Los Angeles (March 28th), the tour visited Amos’ Southend in Charlotte, North Carolina on its second night, and our photographer Jay Valena was on site to capture these amazing images for us. Texas black metal outfit Absu also joined the lineup, just for this show. Enjoy the photos and get psyched for the remainder of the tour! Continue reading “Photo Gallery: Abbath, High On Fire, Skeletonwitch, Tribulation & Absu @ Amos’ Southend, Charlotte NC”
March 16th 2016, The Regent, Los Angeles CA: The term ‘progressive rock’ not only entails the transitional nature of that genre of music wherein it moves between passages of varying tempo and style, but also embodies creative innovation, experimentation and adventure. Last Wednesday March 16th 2016, Los Angeles got treated to an exemplary exhibition of progressive music, from one-of-a-kind French band Magma, who began a two-week North American headline tour the previous night in San Diego, with Los Angeles-based solo doom cellist Helen Money as the touring support act. Magma was founded on truly unique principles in 1969, with the vocals delivered in a constructed phonetic language called Kobaïan, and heavily psychedelic music to accompany the multi-layered singing. Magma disbanded in 1983 but returned in 1996, and not only have they influenced prog masters like Steven Wilson and Mikael Akerfeldt, but have garnered interest from younger generations of prog fans. A packed house at the Regent in downtown LA excitedly awaited their arrival. Continue reading “Avant-Garde Extravaganza: Magma & Helen Money Perform At The Regent”
March 15th 2016, The Roxy, West Hollywood CA: Los Angeles prog luminaries Intronaut released their fifth full-length studio album ‘The Direction Of Last Things’ in 2015, which comes across in every sense as the pinnacle of their musical creativity. Following the release, they completed a successful North American tour supporting Between The Buried And Me and Enslaved, and are now ready to present their newest studio effort in its entirety to their own fans, with enhanced stage production to go with the music. Intronaut embarked on a North American headline tour with support acts Scale The Summit and North last Tuesday March 15th 2016, with a hometown gig at the aptly chosen Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood, and adoring local fans turned up in huge numbers to enjoy a full set from Intronaut, and an evening of intense music from the entire lineup. Continue reading “Intronaut Begins Headline Tour With Hometown Show”
March 14th 2016, Crazy Girls, Hollywood CA: For the second half of my Monday night adventure, I went from stoner doom metal night at Los Globos in Silver Lake to see Guns ‘N Roses tribute band Hollywood Roses at the Crazy Girls strip club in Hollywood, because when you live in Los Angeles you are capable of these kinds of adventures if you so desire. Rock Mondays at Crazy Girls has been a regular night for the last month or so, hosted and promoted by Nick Fuoco, who is the singer of his own Alice Cooper tribute band called Nightmare. Crazy Girls has had rock nights in past years and then it kind of died out when favorite rock ‘n roll stripper Malice left the scene, but it is once again making a comeback with new bands and new strippers. I’ve been trying to attend an entire show here from start to finish since Nick started this but have yet to do so with everything else that’s been going on lately. I figured this was such a fun second adventure in one night, with all my favorite Guns ‘N Roses songs that I can totally sing along to with one of my very favorite Guns N Roses tributes in Los Angeles, that I better not miss it. The timing worked out great and I arrived with moments to spare before Hollywood Roses took the stage.
This band is led by look-a-like front man and king of the Axl dance, Colby Veil, who’s got all things Axl Rose completely fine tuned, which really adds some extra entertainment to the whole performance. His vocals are very stylistically in key to that of Axl Rose which makes it super hard to beat him out in competition, and he is successfully still able to channel young Axl from the Appetite For Destruction years. They played for what seemed like forever, and I could have easily heard two more hours of it. The set featured all the fun Appetite For Distruction songs such as ‘Night Train’, Mr. Brownstone’, ‘Rocket Queen’, ‘My Michelle’, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, and ‘You’re Crazy’, among others. He also did some unusual tunes for a tribute band of this nature and my favorite of the night which was ‘Think About You’, and then what was originally an Aerosmith song cover of ‘Mama Kin’ done in the Guns ‘N Roses style, and also ‘One In A Million’ to round out the performance. Courtney Cox from The Iron Maidens was in attendance on this night, and got on stage for a guest appearance to help out on guitar for a couple of tunes including ‘Welcome To The Jungle’. The guitars were totally up to par with Slash and Izzy, ‘Duff’ was being Duff, and Steven Adler was channeled on the drums as it should be.
Hollywood Roses
One of the challenges at this venue is, despite the decent sized stage complete with stripper poles and the house completely filled with comfy black booths and chairs, there is a lack of sound system which leaves every band to fend for themselves if they want to have a chance of decent sound quality here. Probably the best you can hope for until this changes is ‘decent sound quality’, which Hollywood Roses pulled off as well as possible. Now, as for how it works with the strippers here, it’s really random, and on this night we had one dancing in the front on her own pole while another crawled around on stage searching for dollar bills or something of that nature. I’ve noticed that most of the strippers don’t even listen to or understand rock ‘n roll or metal, and this is usually apparent in the dance moves. Twerking is not metal, and while it is a turn on to some, it is kind of a cop out in my mind. I mean who cares as long as they are half naked and the regulars throw change, right? Well, I care because if I were up there playing I’d want strippers who could dance to my music and make me look better. On this night in particular, I actually did think at least one of the dancers understood it enough, but in general I’ve seen this to be a challenge for some. Overall, this night was packed like I’ve never seen it, and each week seems to get slightly more popular and with the little to no cover charge along with fairly reasonable drink prices, you can’t go wrong. More strippers wouldn’t be a bad idea either, as I feel the numbers have diminished since the first few times I saw rock ‘n roll and metal bands here. Check it out any upcoming Monday if you like sex, booze, rock ‘n roll, metal and plenty of fun and crazy girls, because that’s what you’ll find frequenting this fine establishment.
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March 14th 2016, Los Globos, Los Angeles CA: The last couple of months have really been testing my decision-making skills, or lack thereof, by having too many good shows in one night for me to attend all of, and surprisingly on Monday nights of all nights, which is not an easy night to get out on to begin with. I am however working on becoming a heavy metal superhero who can fly around town saving one metal show at a time while exceeding at least two different shows in one night, but I do like to attend shows in their entirety because some people frown on you when you are only able to see one band at a venue even if it’s your second show of the evening all the way across town. Last Monday March 14 2016, I attended a doom, stoner, psychedelic themed metal show at Los Globos in Silver Lake, featuring headlining act Ape Machine from Portland, Oregon, with support from Beastmaker and The Blood Wisdom. After this entire show I also made my way to see Hollywood Roses play at the local strip club, but I’ll save that adventure for another review. Continue reading “Ape Machine, Beastmaker & The Blood Wisdom Perform At Los Globos”
March 14th 2016, Silver Lake Lounge, Los Angeles CA: In 2015, Los Angeles-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jonah Nimoy started Furiosa, an all-encompassing rock project that pushes the envelope and knows no boundaries. He singlehandedly writes all the songs and records all the vocals, guitars, bass, drums and synth/keys, and also designs the artwork. But he recruited a group of seasoned hometown musicians to present Furiosa live. The band made a successful debut at the Viper Room in West Hollywood in late 2015. Last Monday March 14th 2016, Furiosa played a gig at the Silver Lake Lounge, and yours truly was fortunate enough to be in attendance. Continue reading “Furiosa Rocks Silver Lake”
