Author: Oliver Brink

Oliver is a lover of film, music, theatre, and art. He writes and works out of Los Angeles.

Show Review: TsuShiMaMiRe with skapeche mode at The Moroccan (DTLA)

What do you know about sex and food?
TsuShiMaMiRe destroys Los Angeles.

I’ve never been to the Moroccan Lounge in DTLA adjacent to Little Tokyo –the heritage center is right across Vignes Street–, but its homey charm immediately won me over. Most of the venues I cover have been on the larger size so it is always refreshing to be somewhere closer to the tiny clubs of my youth. If that sentence sounds familiar, it’s because that’s my nostalgia. It was also quite fitting that our proximity would be so close to the Japanese heart of Los Angeles since we were about to get our faces rocked off by a Japanese band, but first…

Continue reading “Show Review: TsuShiMaMiRe with skapeche mode at The Moroccan (DTLA)”

Show Review: bôa w/Rocket at The Fonda (Hollywood, CA), 09-13-2024

“And you don’t seem to understand. . .”

It’s been a while since I’ve been to The Fonda, but it was the same as I remembered it. A cozy little old movie theater turned music venue near the end of the Hollywood Strip where just about every type of music can be heard in a given night. While I’ve been focused a lot more on heavy music for the past year or two, I couldn’t resist when I heard that bôa would be performing.

Continue reading “Show Review: bôa w/Rocket at The Fonda (Hollywood, CA), 09-13-2024”

Show Review: King Buzzo and Trevor Dunn w/JD Pinkus and Field at The Lodge Room, 08-06-2024

I’ve been so immersed in the metal world lately that sometimes I forget that I like other music. I especially forget that weird thrill of going mostly blind into a show. Sure, I may not know an opener or two, but it’s pretty rare for me to cover a band I haven’t listened to beforehand. It’s both exciting and nerve-wracking and, let’s face it, no one wants to be disappointed. Luckily for me, I at least knew of the other music projects of the artists on the night’s lineup, but even knowing that, did not prepare me for what I was about to experience.

Continue reading “Show Review: King Buzzo and Trevor Dunn w/JD Pinkus and Field at The Lodge Room, 08-06-2024”

Show Review: Death To All 6/27 and 6/28/2024 @ The Regent (Downtown Los Angeles)

I often hesitate before I type certain statements. Of course, what writer doesn’t, but more often than not, I find myself questioning how much truth I’m putting down. No self-respecting writer wants to publish hyperbole; it is the enemy of serious writing. With that, I think it is safe to say that heavy metal music has been experiencing a renaissance. With festivals like Sick New World, Mayhem, Metal Injection’s inaugural Summer Slaughter (upcoming), and massive world tours with sonically packed lineups like Chaos and Carnage, it’s a hell of a time to be a metal fan.

Continue reading “Show Review: Death To All 6/27 and 6/28/2024 @ The Regent (Downtown Los Angeles)”

Show Review: Chaos and Carnage at The Belasco, 05-24-2024

FAST. HEAVY. FUCKING. METAL.

As one of the resident heavy music fans of Spinning Platters, it is often equal parts duty and pleasure that guide me from show to show. Duty in the sense that there aren’t many other writers in our humble group that cover punk and metal, pleasure in the sense that I absolutely fucking love it. It also helps that we’ve been in somewhat of a watershed year since 2023, for heavy music, with many bands releasing some of their best music to date, as well as a slough of new bands pushing their way into the lights. Nothing quite embodies that statement like the Chaos and Carnage Tour this year, so it was my absolute pleasure to leave work a bit early to zip on over to Downtown Los Angeles to see one hell of a metal music lineup.

Continue reading “Show Review: Chaos and Carnage at The Belasco, 05-24-2024”

Show Review: Re-TROS, Liars, and Flacid Mojo at The Novo (DTLA), 04-04-2024

I think the last time I saw a show in the LA Live complex in Downtown Los Angeles was when Steven Wilson was touring Hand.Cannot.Erase. It’s a surreal place. High end chain restaurants, shops, and live concert venues all pieced together in a way to showcase itself as a gathering center for food, art, and media, but really it just comes off as an attempt at a capitalist utopia. The Novo is the current iteration of what used to be Club Nokia, the more affordable venue in the complex, especially when compared to The Crypto Arena or the Staples Center. It was still Club Nokia when I saw Steven Wilson, Mindless Self Indulgence, Reel Big Fish, and a number of other bands back in the early 2010s. Nowadays, it is home primarily to hip-hop and pop artists, as a bartender shared with me, so it was going to be a very different night and a different crowd than usual as Re-TROS, Liars, and Flaccid Mojo took the place over.

Continue reading “Show Review: Re-TROS, Liars, and Flacid Mojo at The Novo (DTLA), 04-04-2024”

Show Review: Sleater-Kinney, Palehound, and Rachel Dispenza at The Belasco, 03-29-2024

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.

Continue reading “Show Review: Sleater-Kinney, Palehound, and Rachel Dispenza at The Belasco, 03-29-2024”

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.

Continue reading “Show Review: Go Ahead and Die, Bodybox, Deep Within, Hyper Psychic at Boomtown Brewery (DTLA) 03-19-2024”

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!

Continue reading “Show Review: Mclusky, Suzie True, and Conan Neutron and the Secret Friends at The Echoplex, 03-04-2024”

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.

Continue reading “Show Review: Otoboke Beaver w/Drinking Boys and Girls Choir and Auxilio at The Belasco 03-02-2024”