It’s been a while since I got to see Sleater-Kinney. I was fortunate enough to score some tickets to the acclaimed and mostly sold-out return tour of No New Cities To Love, and let me tell you that it was a hell of an experience to watch the band back in action as if they hadn’t disappeared for ten years following 2005s The Woods. So, with great pleasure, I threw my camera bag over my shoulder and made my way to Downtown LA, The Belasco Theater, my concert home away from home to watch one of the coolest bands ever.
Tag: Los Angeles
Show Review: Go Ahead and Die, Bodybox, Deep Within, Hyper Psychic at Boomtown Brewery (DTLA) 03-19-2024
It’s been quite some time since I’ve covered a show at a venue for the first time. I feel like I’ve been pretty much living at the Belasco, for example, so getting an address for a different venue is always a nice change of pace, especially when it’s somewhere I’ve never been. Boomtown Brewery has been kicking in DTLA north of the arts district for a while now, but they recently started a show booking partnership with The Knitting Factory, which hopefully will bear more fruit for future shows! So I left work half an hour early to brave the even rush hour traffic across town for an evening of hardcore metal music–shocking, I know–and some tasty beer.
Show Review: Mclusky, Suzie True, and Conan Neutron and the Secret Friends at The Echoplex, 03-04-2024
“This one’s for you Susan.”
It’s been a while since I’ve been to a show at the Echoplex. When I first moved to Los Angeles, it quickly became a favorite venue for a wide array of bands, and I covered a lot of fun gigs there. Somewhere along the line, I stopped making it to as many, and I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe I was just working too much, and I was too exhausted even to try, or maybe I just wasn’t seeing the bands that I wanted to see getting booked there. So what a hell of a time to go back to see one of my all-time favorites, Mclusky, tear the fucker apart!
Show Review: Otoboke Beaver w/Drinking Boys and Girls Choir and Auxilio at The Belasco 03-02-2024
“We Are The Champon!”
Rain in Los Angeles, for a supposed plethora of reasons, is like a mini apocalypse. Angelinos just can’t seem to handle it and, more often than not, will stay in during “weather events” instead of going to the movies or grabbing dinner somewhere. It’s just too much of a hassle to brave the weather because everyone on the road is a goddamn idiot. In the case of Otoboke Beaver’s Sold Out show at the Belasco, however, 1,500 people decided to say, “Fuck the rain.” I can’t blame them; I said the same thing. That said, the weather wasn’t particularly awful, in my opinion, as a NorCal-raised aging punk rock metalhead, and god dammit if we weren’t going to enjoy a night of femme-driven rock and roll from across the Pacific.
Show Review: Cattle Decapitation, Immolation, Sanguisugabogg, and Castrator at The Belasco Theatre, 12/15/2023
The Terrasitic Infestation of Los Angeles
Heavy music has been making a pretty big comeback into the public eye lately. My theory is that when the world around us seems intent on reminding us that we are a species that is hardly worth the time and effort it takes to survive, we gravitate toward music that shares that outlook. No band embodies this thesis wholeheartedly as much as San Diego’s Cattle Decapitation, so it should be no surprise that I’m a pretty big fan. That aside, it was one hell of a night for death metal at The Belasco.
Show Review: Dresden Dolls at the Belasco Theatre (Los Angeles), 12/08/2024
“You don’t wanna hear about my Good Day”
In 2008, the Dresden Dolls would play Los Angeles for, seemingly, the last time. In 2008, I was 23 years old, still in college in the rural North of California, fairly isolated from the meccas of civilization and regular concerts of better-known bands. I missed it. After moving to Los Angeles the following year to attempt and fail at breaking into the film industry, I had all but lost hope of ever seeing the Dresden Dolls perform.
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Show Review: Cavalera Conspiracy w/Exhumed, Incite, Thrown Into Exile, and SANGRE at The Wiltern, 10/18/2023
Cavalera: The REAL Sepultura
Show Review and Los Angeles Photos by: Oliver Brink
San Francisco Photos by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks
This one was a bit special for me. Sepultura is a band that I fell deeply in love with in high school, and their music and the continued projects of Max Cavalera have been with me constantly as I navigate my way through life. I always find moments where I just need a song like “Refuse/Resist” or “Troops of Doom” to help me get through a moment of angry energy. So, of course, I had to jump at a chance to see Max and Iggor Cavalera, finally, and when that opportunity arrived, I jumped right the hell on it, even if it meant going to one of my least favorite venues to photograph. More on that later; bands first!
Show Review: Ladytron w/Danz CM @ The Belasco 09-22-23
“Destroy Everything You Touch”
Despite what most of my articles may have you believe, I don’t solely listen to Metal and Punk music. I know, I know, illusion shattered, but I like to believe that despite my inkling towards heavy music, I still have a fairly eclectic taste. The commonality is probably in the thematic songwriting, which almost always leans a bit toward the darker side of things. What I’m trying to say is that I’m a pretty damn big fan of Ladytron, and I have been since my high school days. So of course, I jumped at the chance to catch them at The Belasco Theatre, a venue which is fast becoming my home away from home, in DTLA.
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Show Review: Boris, Melvins, Mr. Flyzzz @ The Belasco 08-24-2023
“Boris knows and Boris likes it all.”
It’s been quite the year in live music so far, and it seems like every band on the planet is touring right now, but when two heavyweights like Melvins and Boris announce a tour together, and not only that, but they announce that they’re going to tour a full album each, it’s a no brainer for me. So I rode off to Downtown Los Angeles for an evening of loud as fuck music from two titans of the genre.
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Show Review: Boy Harsher and Troller at The Belasco Theatre (Los Angeles) 04/19/2022
“Take me down to LA, I wanna go down”
It’s wild to think that the last time I wrote a show review was in 2019. Here we are in the waxing and waning throes of a two-year-long global pandemic and while still testing regularly and waiting for information on the next COVID variant it seems like we’re beginning to move toward a new normal. There’s something surreal and strangely dystopian about going to a concert, let alone to a MinSynth one, but that didn’t stop the many, if any, from attending Boy Harsher’s return to Los Angeles.