Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
I love heavy metal. Shocking, I know, and there are still so many legendary heavy metal bands that I’ve never seen, so whenever a chance arises, I try to snap it up. So when I found out that Testament and Kreator were going to tour together and that, on top of that, they got Possessed to join in? I couldn’t beg fast enough for that press pass!
To call this an end of an era is the most obvious understatement. Forty years of fucking shit up as a punk band is a long time, and while some bands have been at it for just as long if not longer, the impact of NOFX cannot be overstated. They did things DIY when their peers were signing on with and subsequently getting dropped by major labels. They’ve courted controversy, spoken their minds, and rocked the fuck out while doing it. It was fitting that the final three performances of the band’s career would be celebrated in Southern California, where it all began.
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)”
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”
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.
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)”
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”
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”
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.
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.
