As Summer winds itself down brings us to “way too hot Fall,” we figured it was a good day to look back at Mosswood Meltdown 2024. Our dear friend Ben Zero took some lovely black & white shots of Go Sailor!, Wifey, John Waters, Redd Kross, Hot Laundry, Hunx & His Punx, Trap Girl, and Pansy Division for you to enjoy!
Having not been to Toyota Pavilion in Concord at all during this 2024 season, Spinning Platters made the long journey twice in four days (see alsoMegadeth + Mudvayne)! It really is a trek too… from our satellite penthouse office in San Francisco, there’s a thirty-minute MUNI bus followed by a fifty-minute BART ride followed by a twenty-minute Pavilion shuttle, and traveling back after any show typically takes even longer. All that said, it certainly is worth it to be able to bring these shows to life to the readers with our photos and words… it just takes longer to travel than some of these bands’ headlining sets are!
After just over a month on the road, co-headliners Decapitated and SepticFlesh, along with Kataklysm and Allegaeon, held their penultimate show of the Cancer Culture Over North America tour at DNA Lounge in San Francisco. The show was packed from the first band to the last, and all four felt like they could have been the headliner!
You know what’s missing at Spinning Platters? Black Metal. There’s just a lack of content related to the most extreme subgenre of metal music.
(c) Wikipedia
There are even several bands considered influential to this genre, including Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Satyricon and Gorgoroth. The most famous of these bands is definitely Mayhem, where members killed other members, committed suicide, and burned churches… ah, the good ole’ 1990’s!
While the vast majority of the subject matter here is geared more towards fans of Outside Lands than fans of Mayhem, Spinning Platters still employs a few brave souls who will immerse themselves in the mosh pits and get their eardrums pulverized, all in the name of reporting back about the glorious screaming vocals, remarkably incredible fast guitar riffs and blast-beat drumming, as well as maybe a count on the number of non-black clothing (HA!) and inverted crosses seen, and all typically without even having to stock up on corpse paint…
Fortunately for Neck of the Woods, black metal bands these days typically don’t burn down anything or commit murder anymore!
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!
Discovery Park in Sacramento was once again the site for Danny Wimmer Presents annual Aftershock Festival, a four-day rock and metal music festival featuring four stages of many of today’s bona fide headliners as well as plenty of promising new blood. It is also a bit of an endurance test. There are the crazy fans who run in as soon as the gates open and stand at the barricade for basically 11 hours, with no food or even the means to leave to find a restroom (because they’ll never get their spot back). Security did hand out plenty of water up there though so that nobody passed out in the mid-90° heat! There are others who try to take in as much as possible by going from stage to stage to stage all day long to see as many bands as they can. Many just get drunk and sit around on their picnic blanket or at the VIP section tables, while others take it all in stride and hit up the myriad of food trucks, beer tents, alcohol and cannabis vendors… all while everyone is dealing with a heat wave that much of Northern California happened to fall victim to over this very weekend.
Toyota Pavilion at Concord was the third-to-last stop on this summer’s Freaks on Parade tour. 12,000 devotees traveled far and wide to be in attendance for this rally featuring Cooper, alongside running mates Rob Zombie, Al Jourgensen (Ministry), and Richard Patrick (Filter).
Make no mistake though… while Zombie might play second fiddle on a presidential ticket to the elder Cooper, the spectacle of his production and show easily makes him the final headliner of this co-headline gathering!
Before the 3rd song at this, their latest Bay Area appearance, vocalist Dave King mentioned that it has been TEN years since they last performed at The Warfield, so we simply hadto fact-check him and determined that it has actually been SEVENTEEN years since they last stood on this stage! (September 28, 2006; March 14, 2005; September 14, 2004 were the only times) Continue reading “Show Review: Flogging Molly, The Bronx at The Warfield”
