Tag: midnight

Hell or High Roller: Psycho Las Vegas 2021

Rob Shepyer August 26, 2021

There was a time when for me, going to Psycho Las Vegas meant budgeting only enough money to eat McDonalds for three days while I slept on a friend’s couch in some lawless Vegas neighborhood so far off the strip, Ubers wouldn’t dare travel to such unsavory corners. Now, in the post-pandemic world, I report on Psycho with new purpose. This year, I was staying in a Delano scenic suite high above the city and budgeted enough money to properly chase the American dream. Raoul Duke’s American dream in Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a metaphor for the limits of human consciousness. With freedom as the central American covenant, what greater expression of patriotism is there than breaking free of reality’s chains by dosing yourself past every threshold? Now though, as I take that same trip as Duke in 2021, my search for the American Dream is a futile attempt to connect with a time long gone. You might assume I mean the world before the pandemic but I also mean that beautiful era in music history where rock and metal bands could draw crowds as far as the eye can see. How do we recover

The Road to Psycho Las Vegas

Rob Shepyer June 12, 2021

Later this month, I’ll attend my first indoor concert since March 2020. People will not be wearing masks or social distancing. I’ll have dipped my toes into the cultural soup I’ve swam in the majority of my adult life, relearning all the in’s-and-out’s of concert going. Stage-dives and mosh pits have been relegated to my long term memory banks awaiting to be unearthed. Although most metalheads will be breaking their concert fasts soon (if they haven’t already), Psycho Las Vegas is the spiritual grand re-opening of the metal scene in the wild American west. As the first large festival to take place since the beginning of the pandemic, Psycho is a test much like the ones Hunter S. Thompson indulged in with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Our senses may have been perverted, inverted, dulled and destroyed by lengthy quarantines but our imaginations are in better shape than ever and if I can imagine Psycho Las Vegas being the most insane heavy metal summit of my life, then I can will it into being. related content: A High And Beautiful Wave: Psycho Las Vegas 2019 Before the world shut down, Psycho’s 2020 lineup was one of the most anticipated slates of

OC Rots Slow: Obituary, Abbath, and Midnight at the Observatory

Rob Shepyer October 12, 2019

For the longest time, I was consumed with the debate on who should be considered the best death metal band of all time. The usual suspects always make the list of the death metal big four: Death, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, and then the last spot seems to fluctuate between a myriad of bands. Taking their current status in the scene in regard, I thought Possessed had surpassed Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel, earning them the top spot. They still sound incredible live and put on wild shows that nearly topple the venue. However, after their sold out show at Orange County’s Observatory, I’m sorry but the top of that list is a spot reserved only for Obituary. You can take the band’s history as a partial reason why, they’ve been “slowly rotting” for 3o years now but for me, it’s all about the sonic power and how they make me feel. Having seen all the competition, nothing compares to Obituary. related content: The Battle Of The Bays: Obituary & Exodus Clash At Teragram Ballroom This was one of most anticipated tours of the year for metalheads, with a stacked lineup that featured Devil Master on first. Having witnessed their

Speedy Speedy Speed Metal: Midnight At Union

Rob Shepyer June 5, 2018

Before Thrash cemented the marriage of punk and metal, speed metal was what metal heads called metal that inspired a frantic pace and pure ferocity simply through applying quickness to licks. Before doctors ever prescribed kids Ritalin, there was speed metal, fixing the attention spans of the damaged. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between thrash and speed metal but certainly bands like Motorhead, Venom, and the first two Iron Maiden albums, could fall under the category. And in the tradition of those heavyweights, Midnight and Bat went on tour together, eviscerating every city they played in and believe me, Los Angeles wasn’t able to fend off the assault. By the end of the night, the audience that packed into Union’s Jewels’ room was shred to tatters. related content: Crushed At Communion: Cough And Grime At Union This was undoubtably the best metal show I had seen all May, that means it beat out Slayer, Soulfly, Morbid Angel, The Obsessed, and Satyricon. All those legends couldn’t touch the intensity and ruthlessness that Midnight plays with. The first band to play was Wormwitch, a band that describes themselves as crust meets black metal, funny that when I heard them I thought they