Doom metal legends Sleep to play Fox Theater with Oxbow, Kowloon Walled City
I've always kind of thought of Sleep as DJ Screw for metalheads. Well, I actually just always thought of Sleep as Sleep, cuz they're pretty much metal legends at this point. But I also kinda always thought that with their album Dopesmoker, Sleep chopped and screwed doom metal forebears like Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, slowing down their blues-based, proto-doom metal riffs, making them heavier and trippier and changing the game. Since reuniting in 2009 (the band was formed in San Jose back in the 90s), Sleep has played pretty sporadically, so their show on June 5th at the Fox [...]
Show Review: Sleep, Saviours @ Regency Ballroom 9/13
Photos by: Charlie Homo The second show of a two-night run has a strange vibe. The excitement from the debut performance is gone, and you can see it on the faces of the merch girls and the security guards -- they know what to expect. So too do the repeat attenders, and there were plenty there Monday night at the Regency Ballroom, arching their eyebrows and delivering guarded prognostications of stoner metal destruction. The weeknight bill was slightly superior. Former Bay denizens Black Cobra kicked things off with sludgy fury, taking advantage of the venue's potent P.A., which never met [...]
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 [...]
Shredification: High on Fire promise sonic immolation with Snakes for the Divine
When you see Matt Pike play guitar -- snaggle-teeth glinting, baby-beer-belly inching over belt buckle, sweat dripping across numerous just-better-than-jailhouse tattoos -- you realize that he was put on the earth to be a fucking rock star. Even without hearing the inspired, arresting sounds emanating from his funky-looking, custom-made nine-string guitar, the fact is undeniable. Once the mutton-chopped visage is audibly coupled to the hair-raising Motor-Sabbath destruction of Pike's Bay Area power trio High on Fire, the slack-jawed showgoer becomes aware of something headbangingly transcendent transpiring before their very eyes. High on Fire first made waves with 2005's Blessed Black [...]
My Metal Month of May
The shows cropped up fast as Memorial day approached, cascading on top of each other like the hairs of a vigorously headbanged coif. Instead of trying to keep pace, I bode my time. Now, feast on these reviews, covering the last couple weeks of heavy, condensed and combined into an omnibus post, richly suffused with the connective tissue of metaphor and theme. Black Cobra at Thee Parkside, 5/14 The beginning of a landmine marathon, the first battle in a war that my eardrums were certain to lose. Local duo Black Cobra appeared at a birthday party for Pirate [...]