Tag: cold cave

A High and Beautiful Wave: Psycho Las Vegas 2019

Rob Shepyer August 31, 2019

“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” ~ Dr. Hunter S. Thompson With the country’s current political climate putting its populous in divided disarray, one has to wonder if the American dream has remained intact and not fallen by the wayside as so many once credible ideas and institutions have. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson performed a drug fueled pilgrimage down the mainline vein of the country, the dusty connective highways between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, in search for the heart of the American dream and like a lethal dose of adrenochrome, he came bursting on the scene. What the good doctor found was both life and death, decency and depravity, all wrapped into one gaudy American nightmare churned out by the 24 hour fantasy machine of Vegas. Today, if Thompson was alive, he would think Psycho Las Vegas was the climax of the dream he was looking for, a wellspring of underground music taking over the Mandalay Bay Casino & Resort, a

Wax Trax and Vans Present Ministry and Cold Cave at Teragram

Rob Shepyer April 30, 2019

The impact of Wax Trax! Records cannot be understated. Without this small, independent Chicago-based record label, dance music as we know it would be a very different entity. To celebrate the record label’s legacy and Industrial music in general (the genre can’t be divorced from the label), Vans threw a special documentary screening of Industrial Accident, speaking panel, and concert, featuring the landmark of the record label, Ministry, playing an old school set at the Teragram Ballroom. related content: Front 242 And Severed Heads Bring Classic Industrial To The Regent Theater I highly recommend Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records to any fan of rock docs or music films, not only does it give you a very human, personal peek into the label’s history, beginning as a Denver based record store then moving to Chicago and becoming an indie label to be reckoned with but it also introduces you to so much music, from Al Jourgensen’s side projects like Pailhead with Ian Mackaye or all the great European acts that jumped onto Wax Trax! for distribution in the states, from Front 242 to Laibach. The documentary’s protagonists, owners and life partners, Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher, present a heart warming

Gothic Interiors: Cold Cave at the Ace Hotel

Rob Shepyer March 26, 2019

Name something more goth than the Cure, Bauhaus, and Siouxsie combined… shouldn’t be too hard, how about Chartres Cathedral? When goth music and Gothic architecture combine for a concert set under light penetrating through stained glass, it becomes a catharsis similar to that of a good cry. I’ve always been curious about the connection between the aesthetics of Christ worship in the Gothic and sadness in Goth. Have goths been weeping for Christ this whole time or just been looking for someone to hear their prayers, someone who’s there? related content: Your Peace Is Our Peace: David Lynch’s Festival Of Disruption At The Ace Hotel The interior of the theatre at Ace hotel, formerly United Artists theatre, acts as a mirror and conduit to any act on stage, from the purple portal in the ceiling emanating energy to the lobby’s glorious murals which depict scenes too puzzling to be of no biblical significance. The theatre’s stones shifts with the music. Don’t believe me? Pay closer attention, stare long enough and see solids melt before your very eyes! related content: Cloak & Dagger Fest: The Heart Of Los Angeles Bled From Dusk Till Dawn Wesley Eisold of Cold Cave, who recently turned

Punx Not Dead in Petaluma – Home Sick 2 at the Pheonix Theater

Nicole Verto January 30, 2019

“Is punk dead?” I’ve typically found this refrain loathsome and lazy. Despite my ongoing aversion to the utterance, it was front and center in my own (traitor) brain during the week leading up to Home Sick 2. You see, after almost forty years, the punk institution known as Maximum Rocknroll announced that the zine would cease printing in 2019. The notion hit me hard. I recalled being fourteen and seeing MRR for the first time as a young teenager and traced from there to the first time I saw the rows and rows of green-taped records myself. It felt like a death. I went to three other shows in the days between the announcement and attending Home Sick 2 but HS2 was the one that really shook me out of my cynicism. Of course punk is not dead. Of course the community is still growing and reaching folks of all ages. Even better: those of us already in too deep seem to be better than ever at welcoming other sounds into our spaces. The curators behind Home Sick (none other than headliners Ceremony) managed to again create a space both familiar and refreshingly representative of this constant evolution happening within

Wesley Eisold of Cold Cave Interview: Love & Pain One & the Same

Rob Shepyer January 26, 2019

Wesley Eisold of Cold Cave and American Nightmare has proven to be a significant artist in my life as someone I’m inspired by and whose music finds its way into real moments of my life. With his focus on the gothic dance music he makes as Cold Cave, he’s playing two sold out shows at Hollywood Forever for Valentine’s Day and his birthday the following night then embarking on a tour with Adult. and Sextile ending with their Los Angeles date at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel. There was so much I wanted to ask Wesley because he represents two genres of music and thus two states of mind to make art from. Of all the interviews I’ve done, Wesley’s experience as a writer and avid reader made his answers precise, articulate, powerful, and deep. related content: Cloak & Dagger Fest: The Heart Of Los Angeles Bled From Dusk Till Dawn RS: Your two upcoming sold out Los Angeles shows fall on Valentine’s Day then your birthday. What’s it been like having to celebrate those holidays consecutively? WE: Not to sound overdramatic but I always had a negative connotation with Valentine’s Day. I was expecting to experience this high in

Midnight Massacre: American Nightmare At The Echoplex

Rob Shepyer March 18, 2018

Like a long, dooming swing of the reaper’s scythe, death rock and hardcore rained down upon us as if by the hand of Death itself. Since the headliner was hardcore, one might not expect two death rock bands opening up the show but when you consider the history of American Nightmare, it’s not so strange at all. American Nightmare has always highlighted the darker, more gothic side of the human experience to the point that Wesley Eisold, the band’s singer, evolved into Cold Cave, a goth, dark wave sensation. Never straying too far from his roots though, Eisold always kept American Nightmare in his back pocket. Perhaps now he’s wearing those pants back-side front. It’s too sides of the same coin, anyway. A sad, depressed crooner making music you can dance your sorrow away to and a rage-filled banshee that inspires blood-lust, violence, and anarchy in mosh pits that flood onto the stage. American Nightmare was the first band in the hardcore scene to really delve into emotional, darker lyrics and tones while not straying from true hardcore and the scene. The first band to open up the evening was Death Bells, a young death rock outfit from Sydney, Australia that

Cloak & Dagger Fest: The Heart Of Los Angeles Bled From Dusk Till Dawn

Rob Shepyer October 27, 2017

Good “dark” music should come from a damaged yet open heart because it’s those damages that make all the styles of dark music involved in Cloak And Dagger Festival beautiful to those that wear black late at night- or during the day, for that matter. Whether it was dark wave, new wave, post punk, goth/death rock, industrial, EBM, or shoegaze, every shade of black was represented on those two cold October nights. Right from the first lineup announcement, it was understood that this would be like no other festival. With three stages at the Globe and Tower theaters, an all black dress code, and local brand recognition, I was sure the siamese evenings would play out like a movie, think Eyes Wide Shut meets Gimme Shelter. The lineup hosted plenty of bands that are Janky Smooth favorites like Ho99o9, Health, Moon Duo, and Uniform. Iconic artists like KMFDM, OhGr, and The Jesus and Mary Chain were set to share the two stages with future headliners like Cold Cave, The Soft Moon, and Lust For Youth. So any goth kid, let alone this one, would be awestruck and elated at the chance to partake in the affair. Night 1: Black is the absence of