Shredification: Sleep at the Regency Ballroom 9/12, 9/13
I always thought Sleep was one of those bands that I would just never get to see, like Zeppelin, or the real Guns 'n' Roses. The members disbanded in 1995, fed up with the intractability of their label, London Records, which refused to release Dopesmoker, the band's hour-long stoner metal odyssey of an album -- the sort of artistic endeavor that the phrase "magnum opus" was invented to describe. The members moved on to other projects -- guitarist Matt Pike to High on Fire; bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Haikus to Om. For fans of the doom genre, even [...]
The newest from SF metal band Kowloon Walled City
Kowloon Walled City's new record is called Gambling on the Richter Scale , which is both a homage to their San Francisco roots and an introduction to their sound. Taking a page from bands like Unsane and local heroes Neurosis, the quartet specializes in mammoth, down-tuned riffs -- slabs of tectonic impact that seem summoned from the San Andreas fault itself. Built around bassist Ian Miller's monstrous tone and the sheer amperage marshaled by guitarists Scott Evans and Jason Pace, the band is undergirded by Jeff Fagundes' heavy-handed drumming and brought to a rousing roar by Evans' hardcore-influence barks, which [...]