Tag: featured

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at Cruel World 2025 by Albert Licano

Cruel World 2025 At The Rose Bowl: We’re Only Happy When It Rains

Rob Shepyer May 20, 2025

Cruel World 2025 at the Rose Bowl was the fourth iteration of the festival, but some strange alignment in the distant goth cosmos caused a number of firsts in Cruel World history. Rain fell on Los Angeles’ goth community as they all gathered at the Rose Bowl for what music fans recognize as goth prom. Cruel World is much more than a goth fest, though—’80s music, metal, and punk all performed in gloomy Pasadena over the weekend. Never before did the concertgoers, wearing their finest layers of black, actually dress appropriately for the weather—until now. Some came to Cruel World to see Devo “Whip It” like it was 1980, some came to be in the palm of Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand”, others came just to get a one-day vacation with New Order before “Blue Monday. Whatever the motivation, the festival once again found appropriate meaning in its name. This year it was cold and dreary, with imported London fog infused with LA smog. Most people prefer not to experience a concert drenched from head to toe, but as a departure from the brutal heat of previous years, it had some upsides. The rain forced many Cruel Worlders looking for shelter

Model/Actriz at The Roxy: A Queer Sermon in Noise Rock

Taylor Wong May 16, 2025

I first stumbled into the world of Model/Actriz by accident. It was a few years back at Sound & Fury Fest, and I was assigned to shoot them. I didn’t know their name, didn’t know the music, didn’t know what I was about to walk into. I just knew I had a lens in my hand and a job to do. What I got instead was a conversion. Right out the gate, they hit the stage with a mix of post-punk, industrial noise-rock, and pure unfiltered gay energy. The kind that doesn’t ask for permission. The kind that vogues and spits and bleeds. Cole Haden—Model/Actriz’s frontman and spiritual conjurer—was bouncing across the stage like a punk rock ballerina. Limbs flying, chest heaving, eyes wild. And then, mid-set, he leapt into the crowd and performed most of the set among us, singing to our faces, brushing against shoulders, dissolving the barrier between performer and observer in a way I hadn’t seen since… ever. That show stuck with me. And like all things that feel a little too intense to be real, I wondered if I’d built it up in my head over time. Cut to last night at the Roxy Theatre

Negative Spaces In A Hyper Poppy Atmosphere At The Wiltern

Danny Ryan May 8, 2025

Poppy is certainly an anomaly in the heavy music world, almost resembling an overall brand or abstract concept more than just a simple musician as she further blurs the line between influencers and artists. While many people are familiar with her through her days of bizarre Youtube videos where she took on the role of a robotic AI humanoid spouting nonsense, she has come a long way from the novelty of being a subject for reaction videos and has really proved herself as a refreshing forward-thinking figure in heavy metal. Fresh off of her newest album “Negative Spaces” and recent collaborations with Knocked Loose and Sleep Token; Poppy brought her blend of bubblegum catchy melodies, glitchy industrial effects, and brutal metalcore breakdowns to The Wiltern for a night of pure chaotic poppy energy. With Los Angeles being the last date of this tour, Poppy went all out in transforming The Wiltern into her own signature bizarre, twisted world that converted any stubborn metalhead in the room to a believer in her vision for the genre’s future. related: Different Shades of Black and Blue – Knocked Loose at 1720 The opening act Chinese American Bear was an interesting choice for the

Parliament Funkadelic at Ventura Music Hall shot by Jeff Tillquist

How to Humanize an Alien: Parliament Funkadelic at Ventura Music Hall

Rob Shepyer May 5, 2025

Thanks to Ventura Music Hall and George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelic was up until Monday, a bucket list band that needed to get checked off my list if I was really to consider myself a music junkie. Now, in a totally changed state of mind since seeing them perform classic songs like “Flashlight”, “Atomic Dog”, “We Got The Funk”, and more, I’ve been feeling this strange sense of nostalgia for a time I didn’t even exist in. That time I’m so fondly recalling through videos, images, and oral tradition was the seventies. At the time, pop culture was more colorful, vivid, imaginative, and real. Forced to create practical magic and effects if artists wanted to make concerts feel out of this world, groups like Parliament Funkadelic constructed UFOs that would land on stage and release a cavalcade of alien crazies upon the audience, all dressed and sounding completely unique from one another to create a funk jam session akin to stream of consciousness power poetry. It was in the seventies, back when a heavily dreaded George Clinton produced acid-inspired rollercoaster rides that ranged from metallic to soulful to downright religious, that Clinton and his band were at their peak-alieness. Today, as

Obituary at The Bellwether by Taylor Wong

Obituary At The Bellwether: 35 Years of Cause Of Death

Danny Baraz April 30, 2025

This past Saturday, April 26th, in the year of our Lord, 2025, Obituary, along with Nails brought their tour celebrating 35 years of Cause of Death to The Bellwether in Downtown Los Angeles. Tampa Florida’s Obituary released their second album, Cause of Death in 1990—35 years ago. I was a freshman in high school. I had never heard anything like it and I found out pretty quickly that NO ONE else had heard anything like it, either. My teenage feelings of suffering and despair and confusion and anger finally had a soundtrack. I was just getting into thrash metal and hardcore punk and picking up a guitar for the first time. My preferences leaned toward frenetic chaos with a high bpm. Fast and hard. But Obituary and Cause of Death showed me a new way—grinding, low tempo, heavy riffs that slowly dragged bodies across the floor. Sludgy breakdowns building to blast beat eargasms that changed my life forever. Slayer and others showed them the way but it was Cause of Death that had that mix of thrash and sludge that really got me off. That cassette lived in my Walkman for a good 3 months, uninterrupted. It formally introduced a

Together Pangea at El Rey by Taylor Wong

Together Pangea and Prison Affair Tear Up Coachella Side Show at El Rey

Taylor Wong April 28, 2025

In between their Coachella Weekends 1 and 2 sets, Together Pangea and Spain’s Prison Affair stopped off in Los Angeles for a sold-out show at the El Rey Theatre — a sweaty, cathartic night that offered fans a more intimate taste of the chaos they’d just unleashed in the desert. While both bands came with buzz, they offered two very different flavors of punk-adjacent mayhem — one a homegrown institution, the other a rising international cult. Together Pangea has long been synonymous with LA’s garage rock underground. Formed in 2008 when frontman William Keegan began sharing songs from his dorm room, the band quickly found footing in the DIY circuit before crashing through with 2014’s Badillac. Known for their explosive live shows and slacker-meets-sleaze songwriting, they’ve become a staple of Southern California’s indie rock scene — the kind of band that’s always on someone’s “you had to be there” list. And while their El Rey set was classic Together Pangea — wild, gritty, and tight — there was a warmth to it, too. Maybe it’s the fact that Keegan and his partner Kelsey are expecting their first child soon, a new chapter that adds a subtle sense of joy and

Beth Gibbons at The Orphuem: Outgrowing Your Own Creation

Rob Shepyer April 23, 2025

Beth Gibbons at The Orpheum Theatre was more than just a showcase of new music, it was a showcase of a new Beth Gibbons for all Los Angeles to enjoy. When you think Beth Gibbons and Portishead, you think of a specific sound. An elevated, urbanized jazz that pairs well with a Bond movie, maybe, or you think of the trip hop moniker developed by her band and other English groups like Massive Attack. Beth Gibbons’ solo work, and especially her 2024 album Lives Outgrown doesn’t so much as develop on the song she help originate and cultivate though, it outgrows it with a new evolution in her artistry that includes influences from folk, psychedelic, medieval, and world music sensibilities. Driving to the Orpheum theatre on a drowsy Thursday evening, her new album gave my trip a surreal feel, making each beat of time pass by with more meaningful reflection, and each tree outstretching over the freeway walls more tranquilizing with the nature-vibes captures on songs like “Floating on a Moment” or my favorite on the album, “Whispering Love”. Skimming through the tracklist now and looking back on the show, I see both as a statement on identity, lost and

Rose Tattoo at The Whisky, Rose-Tattoo-live-in-LA

Garage Rockers vs Skinheads vs Hardcore Kids: Rose Tattoo at the Whisky

Rob Shepyer April 16, 2025

The Whisky ’25: Rose Tattoo’s First US Show Since ’83 When Rose Tattoo announced their first American show since 1983, not only could I not believe it, but I made sure to procure tickets almost immediately. This show would then get cancelled, only for the prospect of Rose Tattoo playing Los Angeles to dissolve and become a big question mark. Would the legendary Australian band ever play in America again? This is a pure rock and roll band that didn’t just go on to inspire Guns and Roses but numerous scenes throughout Los Angeles, from skinheads to hardcore kids to garage rockers. It would otherwise be impossible to see these three scenes merge into one audience. Even for a megaband like The Misfits, these groups don’t come together to mingle in such close quarters. So, when Rose Tattoo announced two new shows in LA years later and then finally hit the stage at Whisky-a-Go-Go on March 6th and 7th, all those scenes were present and pounding their fists for what must’ve been an awfully cold day in hell. The set ran the gamut of a slew of Rose Tattoos classics such as “Nice Boys” and “Rock and Roll Outlaw,” with

T.Y. Ojai: Ty Segall at Ojai Valley Women’s Club

Rob Shepyer March 4, 2025

With MTV’s Unplugged catalogue hitting Paramount+ recently, I’ve been on a bit of an acoustic kick. When a popular artist goes acoustic, it’s a sign of a deeper appreciation and commitment to their fans and music than standard touring, writing, and recording cycle an artist goes through. Choosing to go on an acoustic tour, like the one Ty Segall and King Tuff are currently collaborating on throughout California, presents a challenge to a musician that really tests their artistry. It strips them of all the bells and whistles fans expect from their songs and live show, forcing the artist to compensate with pure charisma and sonic bravado. Both King Tuff and Ty Segall exhibited powerful charisma as acoustic artists, taking advantage of the silence between and around their songs to amplify the meaning of every lyric and note. The result of which is that audiences that were lucky enough to catch these shows may not have had their socks rocked off like they would in a Ty Segall and The Muggers show, or a Witch (King Tuff’s metal band) show, but we did experience the full fleshed out power and message of Ty’s songs like no other fans ever have.

Top Ten SHOWS of 2024 Rated by Contributors

Janky Smooth Central Command December 31, 2024

Shows have always been Janky Smooth’s bread and butter. Our contributors are willing travel far and wide for the right show, willing to abandon their families and face every obstacle to get there in time to see a compelling opener with any legit hype. This list will feature shows all across Los Angeles, California, and the whole of the United States. It will feature festival sets and intimate evenings with. It’ll list out shows with mosh pits and intimiate seating. Every musical experience under the sun, our contributors have seen it and are using their expert curation skills to give you the best of the best of 2o24. Publisher, Danny Baraz Ministry at Cruel World Ceremony and Infest at The Hollywood Palladium The Original Misfits at No Values Power Trip at The Fonda HEALTH, Panther Modern, Pixel Grip at The Music Box Tyler, the Creator at Camp Flog Gnaw Boy Harsher at The Glass House Primus, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle at Hollywood bowl The Black Angels at The Lodge Room Front 242 at The Mayan Editor, Rob Shepyer Trash Talk at Echoplex Ceremony at Hollywood Palladium Swans at Lodge Room Ministry at Cruel World Tool at Crypto.com Arena Queens of

Earth’s Crust: CY Fest 2024 at the Belasco

Rob Shepyer November 6, 2024

What does a typical LA punk want out of a festival? Given that Los Angeles is the most prominent live music hub in the USA, and the world, the average LA punk attends enough shows to make any given concert, no matter how badass, still leaving something to be desired. From my personal experience, that thing LA punks are left desiring from their scene is to have their minds, tastes, and boundaries expanded. I want to see something different, new. I want a band to show me something I didn’t think was possible. The best way to do this is by assembling bills with bands of various styles from various parts of the globe, and no festival has gathered more international acts in Los Angeles than CY Fest 2024. It was the World Cup of punk, with heavy representation from Sweden, Spain, Japan, Italy, Mexico, and so many more countries. Topping off the festivities, the USA’s contribution to the lineup came in the form of a rare Dropdead co-headlining performance before the reunion of Portland’s female-fronted crusties, Detestation. related content: Set The Animals Free: Wolfbrigade and Dropdead at 1720 With a few bands of the upcoming CY Fest 2025 already

Dangerously Artsy: Geneva Jacuzzi at the Lodge Room

Rob Shepyer September 13, 2024

Geneva Jacuzzi‘s “Art is Dangerous” isn’t just the banger single from her most recent Dais Records full length album, Triple Fire, “Art is Dangerous” is both an affirmation of the intention to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable (a sentiment lost among more and more corporatized and bubble-wrapped, cookie cutter artists) and it’s also a reference to a timeless debate that transcends culture. Is art dangerous? Were Tipper Gore and the PMRC right all along? Can you ingest as much devil worship, pornographic, sinful material as possible without having your soul tarnished one iota? Can you play endless hours of GTA, shooting up civilians without feeding a subliminal bloodlust, can you listen to Radiohead without feeling lonely or binge-stream Slayer without losing faith? Far too many people in the current state of the world are beginning to veer toward answering “yes”. That art, is in fact, dangerous. Even though Geneva Jacuzzi is affirming that danger, I have to wonder if she sees it dangerous in the same way as a certain sector of extreme believers who’s rhetoric makes you think they desire a modern bonfire of the vanities. I say this because Geneva Jacuzzi’s performance for her album release