Tag: ventura music hall

Eyehategod and Crowbar at Ventura Music Hall: Sludge for the Social Media Age

Rob Shepyer April 6, 2026

On March 27, 2026, I witnessed a rare performance by Crowbar at Ventura Music Hall opening for the almighty Eyehategod and it made me ask the question- how well do social media and heavy metal truly mesh? It’s nice to see our favorite bands gain exposure and release content for us all to enjoy, but is anything lost in the transaction when a band subjects themselves to tap dancing for mass media? In the case of Crowbar, they’ve gained quite a bit of notoriety from TikTok after their song “Repulsive in Its Splendid Beauty” went viral and meme-ified the band into music made for big boys who ride hogs and take no shit. The virality of the band didn’t just lead to exposure, though. It translated into ticket and merchandise sales that are noticeable to everyone in the know. related: Fresh Fridays: Neurosis, ADULT., Këkht Aräkh, Flea, and King Tuff Crowbar is a legendary band, and the song was a classic off a sludge metal masterpiece long before TikTok was developed. They didn’t need this bump in fame to cement their status as heroes in the worlds of sludge metal or their hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. related: Acid Bath

Brian Jonestown Massacre by Michelle Evans

Spectrums of Psyche: Brian Jonestown Massacre at Ventura Music Hall

Rob Shepyer March 24, 2026

The fact that two bands as sonically distant as ÖLÜM and Brian Jonestown Massacre could share a bill this past March 4, 2026 itself would go down in Ventura Music Hall’s history books is a testament to Psych Rock splendors. Psych Rock is the least monolithic subgenre you can find. That’s part of the sound’s psychedelic nature, that it encapsulates all the weirdness the world has to offer. That said, when a person thinks psych rock, the words come with sonic baggage. Psych Rock isn’t just an umbrella term for anything trippy, it’s a style and structure of music that is loose, vibey, wild, unhinged, dreamy, and more. related: BJM in Los Angeles- Music Snobs and Fentanyl Lolipops related: How To Humanize An Alien – Parliament Funkadelic at Ventura Music Hall ÖLÜM represents the sort of psych rock you imagine at a completely unchained house party in Silverlake circa-2015. They sounded like the best Turkish rock and roll the Middle East has to offer. It goes to show you, one man’s psychedelic is another man’s culture. That is to say, some cultures are more inherently psychedelic than others. With histories steeped in shamanism or mysticism, non Western cultures feel more psychedelic. Sure,

GBH at Ventura Music Hall- Street Punks In Paradise

Rob Shepyer October 29, 2025

The scene was the Hi Hat. One of the most vibrant venues during its short life on York, a must attend space on Highland Park art-walk nights. I don’t remember who was playing, just that it was a punk show because Blaque Chris was DJ’ing between the bands that night. During his set, Blaque Chris spun a track that stood out to me as especially vibrant and danceable, but in that street punk way, like kicking up dirt in the discotheque. I didn’t know the song at the time and went on a long journey trying to find it. Before seeing GBH at Ventura Music Hall though, the planets aligned to tell me the song was Big Women by GBH off their “Leather, Bristles, Studs, and Acne” album. GBH is quintessential street punk- the exact sound and spirit of the punk genre and look. Songs like Big Women are exemplary of that vibe. Comical, crass, gritty, simple, rhythmic, and too much fun to stop your body from hopping up and down. It took me far too long to see them perform, but finally, I had my punk rock rite of passage on October 17, 2025 by seeing them with Slaughterhouse

Glass Beams at Ventura Music Hall: Desert in a Bottle

Rob Shepyer August 28, 2025

This has been a psychedelic week for me, still feeling the afterglow of seeing Pigs x7, so before I could enter this new trip closer to home, I needed to sober up off the lingering sonic buzz. I wanted to clear out the leftover distortion rattling in my head so I could step into the Ventura Music Hall with ears and mind ready to feel the pure, authentic high off the sound of Glass Beams. related: Pigs x7 Launch North American Tour At Lodge Room Glass Beams plays in the tradition of distorting and disrupting traditional, exotic world music into modernized, minimalist psychedelia. Their music doesn’t need to shout, roar, or crash like a doom riff to get you there; it works in repetition, mood, and layering. It works in space. They aren’t the first to attempt this blend and they won’t be the last, but at the moment, they feel like the only band making traditional world music vibrations consumable for folks interested in dancing on clouds, instead of just headbanging in basements. Shows like this are rare in Ventura, though they strike a nerve in both artist and audience that no other city quite can. Ventura has always

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

Pentagram at Ventura Music Hall by Steve Martinez

Pentagram- Doom Ages Like Fine Wine At Ventura Music Hall

Rob Shepyer February 21, 2025

Something about old age injects more gravitas into a doom metal musician’s art. Perhaps its being closer to the great beyond, that dark place from which inspiration comes from that we all join at the end of our days. Perhaps something about graying hair and wrinkled skin makes the purveyor of doom metal all the more convincing to an audience. Doom metal, is of course a genre about bleakness and sorrow. A long life devoted to that style of music must have experienced everything the world has to offer, so to come away with singing “doom to world” instead of “Joy to world” gives fans the assurance that this artist is the real deal, and they’re not just playing a character in a gimmick. Then of course, there’s pace. Doom metal is slow metal. Slowness and sloth are what some equate with growing old. Dragging your feet, letting time pass you by because it makes no difference. All these ideas are second nature to doom metal’s mournful verses and tones. Bobby Liebling and the boys in Pentagram have been around since the inception of doom metal. Playing this genre of music before it had a name. To them, it was

Tonic Truth and Collective Consciousness: Kim Gordon at Ventura Music Hall

Rob Shepyer April 6, 2024

In her latest reinvention, Kim Gordon deepened her trip hop digs and redefined her signature noise rock stylings into a pure avalanche of disruption to pull our eyes out of our phones, whether to pay attention or escape into a headbang, so we may listen to what she has to say. This was my 2nd time seeing Kim Gordon live, my sole-previous experience was witnessing her headline Mosswood Meltdown 2022. Since then, she’s released The Collective the most defining album of her solo career and the Ventura Music Hall was the perfect place to perform. The venue is a uniquely chill hanger, resting in a uniquely chill slice of California. A true gem of the 805, it’s one of the best places to see a band for its great sound quality, acoustics, bar, kitchen and staff. Blessed by a painting of The Last Supper featuring the cast of The Big Lebowski in the darkened right corner of the room, every show is innately intimate at Ventura Music Hall. related content: Glorious Leader, Kim John Kill: Mosswood Meltdown 2022 The first track on the Collective, “BYE BYE”, was both Kimlet’s opener and closer for this tour. The song is a farewell