Tag: union nightclub

The Heavy Sound of Nature: Alcest Plays “Kodama” at Catch One

Rob Shepyer November 8, 2018

The first show I attended at Catch One since their recent rebranding was French metal-gaze innovators, Alcest‘s performance of their seminal album, “Kodama”. You can sense new life in the walls at Catch One, something feels different and fresh. Paying homage to the club’s original incarnation as a safe haven for the black LGBTQ community, the club is now just as safe and just as much of a haven for all. This show featured a powerhouse lineup with King Woman and Glaare supporting Alcest. The last time I saw Glaare, they were mashed between two goth bands that made their unique sound stick out like a sore thumb. I found it too cool in the context of a sad boy goth show but on this night I had different feelings. The sound system at Union captured their element better than the Echoplex and having been the show’s opener, there was no other sound for me to compare them to. related content: Who’s The Better Brother? Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel The band’s singer, Rachael, has her on-stage charisma down. She knows how to play with stage banter and move to make for a dramatic performance. Sonically, the band makes a disorienting

Take This: Win Two Tickets to Alcest at Catch One

Janky Smooth Central Command October 30, 2018

French metal-gaze innovators Alcest are returning to Los Angeles’ Catch One (formerly Union Nightclub) touring a set that will feature their seminal album Kodama played in its entirety. Few bands have been able to marry such heavy, brutal sounds with such lush, beautiful ones as well as Alcest has. Supporting them on this tour are King Woman and Glaare, two underground heavyweights in their own right. Janky Smooth is giving away a pair of tickets to this stacked lineup. YOU CAN BUY TICKETS HERE OR ENTER TO WIN 2 TICKETS TO ALCEST NOVEMBER 2nd AT CATCH ONE Step 1- Join Our Newsletter (look for pop up every time you arrive at jankysmooth.com) Step 2- Tag a Friend in the comment section of our Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook Alcest Posts WINNER WILL BE WILL BE SELECTED ON THURSDAY NOVEMBER 1ST AT 11AM PST VIA EMAIL CONFIRMATION

A Handle of Jim Beam and a Joint: Weedeater at Union

Rob Shepyer July 21, 2018

Among the veterans of the stoner metal genre, Weedeater is the loudest, the stoniest, and the best. Often times the bands that come to mind when you say stoner metal are Sleep and Electric Wizard, I figure these people have never seen Weedeater live because once you do and headbang your neck off while every piece of your clothing vibrates and you nearly go deaf, you realize no band is heavier. After a Weedeater show, you won’t exclude them from any conversation about the power of live music. related content: Ascending The Holy Mountain: Sleep At The Fonda Theater The Carolinas aren’t heavily represented in metal but when they are, like in this case, they make such a huge splash that you immediately get a sense of the area. If the Carolinas feel like Weedeater, they’re a bold, down to earth, and toughened bunch. related content: Weedeater And The Obsessed At The Regent: Blaze It Up, Fool Dixie Dave, Weedeater’s iconic bassist and vocalist, is the perfect spokesperson for stoner rock. With the ability to drain a handle of Jim Beam and sip on cough syrup during his shows and only being enhanced by these substances, Dixie has develop super human

One Friday Night in Hell Part 4: Os Mutantes at Union

Grace Dunn July 14, 2018

Beads of sweat, sans regret. Move your body to the voodoo rhythm of Bat Macumba on the most sweltering summer night in Los Angeles. I admit it felt too perfect a circumstance for the universe to combine this delectable lineup of Os Mutantes and L.A. Drones in the melting pot that is Union Night club. I remember looking up the show in advance thinking: “Why did a legendary sixties band choose a low key venue far out from the usual popular venues in LA?” I figured perhaps I haven’t explored the venue’s history enough to give it credit. I had been to Union Nightclub years earlier for a show or two, but never since. Either way, I looked forward to this because I missed their set back in 2013 at Carson Creek Ranch for Austin Psych Fest. Moving forward, I knew I wanted a refreshing night of music to dance and thoroughly enjoy movement with the musicians. I couldn’t foresee the added heat of the night making it almost unbearable to move even with the fans blowing into the audience. All I ever saw whenever I would visit the venue in the past was how rowdy the crowd was waiting for an electronic

Sonic Punishment: Primitive Man and Celeste at Union

Janky Smooth Central Command June 13, 2018

The variety of soundscapes in metal are an interesting thing; even the untrained ear can notice a vast difference between acts like Cough (who also performed at Union in May) and Primitive Man – two bands that share the label of “doom” but approach their craft with entirely different methods and goals. With a stacked lineup including Primitive Man, Celeste, Infernal Coil, and Pendulous, this evening was an interesting exercise of the flexibility in sound and tone within those parameters for significantly different sub-genres and a fine example of just how well some of those combinations can work. related content: Crushed At Communion: Cough And Grime At Union Pendulous play a fine brand of funeral doom packed with the two most essential qualities any group in this sub-genre needs: depression and introspection. Each song (while relentlessly crushing) seemingly drifts through space as an agonized ghost: endless suffering, longing, and helplessness riddling a soul cursed to an eternity attempting to grasp a line of comfort always just out of reach. Easily the most captivating performer of the evening, vocalist Eric Rezsõ Mendoza delivers each line as if he’s crawling through miles of broken glass and gives the band the emotional strength

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

Crushed at Communion: Cough and Grime at Union

Dillon Vaughn May 25, 2018

Union is a weird venue (and I say that entirely with love.) The range of genres and performers you can see there within any given three day period is unparalleled; multiple rooms and the willingness to take risks and work with promoters and musicians from vastly different scenes gives many acts a proper home beyond DIYs and dives – often juxtaposing seemingly alien niches on a single patio on the busiest nights. This lack of pretension has allowed some of the most intimate and (truly) stacked metal lineups to flourish here over the month of May – all beginning with Cough and Grime. related content: Satyricon’s Final Los Angeles Show At The Regent: A Night Too Blackened To Forget A quick glance at Midnite Collective’s past events reveals a finely curated selection of some of the most forward thinking and refined artists in doom and sludge – bands more than capable of exceeding the expectations set by the buzz and hype surrounding them: Cough and Grime being no exception to the standard. The night began with support from Midnight Collective favorites Trapped Within Burning Machinery and -(16)-, each delivering charged performances that set the tone perfectly. -(16)- has grown on

Finding the Funk: Birocratic at Union

Dillon Vaughn May 20, 2018

I’d like to begin by getting one very important thing out of the way: I’m a transplant here, as I’m sure a solid 95% of those reading this are too. I’m not as far from my home (Arizona) or my home before that (New Mexico – fuck it, I’m a child of the southwest after all) as most of you are, but I’m sure one thing is common among all of us: moving to Los Angeles represented a pivotal moment in which we were all allowed to explore and pursue every desire and interest we’d ever had, regardless of the cultural taboos and expectations placed upon us by those who raised us and sent us out into this mess (often unwillingly.) I was brought up in a very “metal” family; my parents owned a record store in New Mexico throughout my childhood called The Dragon’s Lair and our family road trips (which were almost exclusively planned around concerts) were soundtracked by the big four or Iron Maiden with sprinkles of what would become a growing obsession of mine: funk. Those deep, catchy grooves encouraged me to dig through every soul section I came across in a record store by the

Risking Life and Limb to Cover HORSE the band at Union Los Angeles

Taylor Wong April 14, 2017

A lot of the bands we were listening to in high school are just now hitting their 10-20 year anniversary on their hit albums. There has been a resurgence of bands that many left for dead- but isn’t that the case for almost all popular art? This weekend was a major festival (When We Were Young) who’s entire line up consisted of people I thought were dead or working at Starbucks. The one comeback (although to be honest they may have never left) I was super stoked for was the night before this shit show of a festival, HORSE the Band at Union Night Club. Upon arriving, I instantly ran into Nathan Winneke, singer of HORSE the Band, just hanging out, drinking beers at the merch table, talking with fans and hanging out with his wife. I got the chance to chat with him for a bit before the first band. We somehow got on the topic of Fartbarf playing the show. Nathan told me that apparently, for the last 3 years people have been telling him to book Fartbarf and finally it just happened to work out. We talked about their sound and masks a bit which then took us

UNIFORM & Black Marble at Union: The Mongrelization of Music Continues…

Aria Silva-Espinosa February 27, 2017

Tucked away amongst a row of small businesses and street vendors, the massive, multiple roomed venue called UNION is actually pretty easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. Even the marquee is unassuming amidst the flashing lights of the Pico-Union storefronts along the boulevard. Bright neon signs indicate that the Jewel Room awaits just past the side entrance and patio, still wet from the last few days of rain- a more perfectly planned setting for Black Marble and UNIFORM seemed impossible to imagine. Janky Smooth listed UNIFORM as a top 25 band to watch in 2017 so I believe it was the reason my request to cover this show was approved but I was most excited to cover Black Marble, a band that couldn’t sound ANY more different than UNIFORM. This should be interesting! Inside UNION, the stage is illuminated in light teal as the first act takes the stage. Anzano is a one-man act consisting of heavily distorted vocals, pre-recorded or triggered synth tracks and a giant flying-V shaped guitar that goes relatively ignored, save for a few sparse riffs. To compensate for the seeming limited musicality, Anzano is dressed in a sequin cape, chain mail cap

Smashing More Teeth With Youth Code Orange at Union Los Angeles

Danny Baraz February 2, 2017

On January 28th in the year of our lord, 2017, I was initiated into the Youth Code and Code Orange live shows when the front of my bottom row of teeth were smashed through the space between my bottom lip and my chin in a live show that literally left an ounce of my blood on the floor of Union nightclub in Los Angeles when the heavy industrial tech duo, Youth Code opened for Code Orange this past Saturday night. Moments before my injury was sustained, I was lamenting the sad reality of a stagnant audience standing still as they witnessed the heaviest band in electronic music since Front 242 and before Ministry went full metal on the masses of the New World Order. Singer, Sara Taylor handled the sad reality well until about 5 songs in when me and a couple of other kids took matters into our own hands and gently convinced the audience standing directly in front of the stage to dance. Shortly thereafter, I experienced a momentary blackness and disorientation and a mysterious numbness in my mouth and aching in my jaw. A bit confused, I put my hand to my mouth and it was instantly

The Spits at Union Nightclub Los Angeles

The Spits at Union: Trash and Glamour United in Los Angeles

Rob Shepyer December 13, 2016

Cha Cha chicks and Footsies freaks, Full Time Punx and Part Time Punx, vinyl archeologists, wax wizards- Blundertown has sounded the clarion call and presented to you, on stages made of broken glass and cigarette butts, The Spits at Union Nightclub. This is the first show at Union I’m reviewing, so I’m going to take the opportunity to bathe you in my admiration for that special place. Is it in Crenshaw? Is it in K-town? Do you know it as Union or do you know it as Jewel’s? Do you party on the top, the bottom, or on the smoker’s patio? At any given show, all these places are poppin’ off- lit af. The top floor which hosted our event on this chilly Thursday night is huge, has two bars, plenty of space to chill, flirt, fuck, or just head bang and slam dance your punk puke out of your eyes. It can host a huge “credible” band but opts out of that for the real shit to service the cool kid contingent- and there’s plenty of places to sit… what a fucking concept! The first band to appease the gathering hordes was Dirty and His Fists with a dress