Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ConcertGoingPro
DNA Lounge has been on a tear lately with their metal bookings in the last 10 days of March. Starting with the Bay Area’s own gore metal band Exhumed, to English thrash metal band Onslaught several days later, culminating in a one-two punch of NWOBHM band Raven alongside Bay Area’s newest thrash metal supergroup Nefarious and New Orleans sludge metal masters Crowbar and Eyehategod to close out the month!
Spinning Platters was unable to make it to the first two, but our good friend Bleeding Priest at Hectic Records wrote great reviews from these shows. Read those here – Exhumed – Onslaught – but don’t forget to finish reading this one too…
NWOBHM, or New Wave of British Heavy Metal, was the term given to the rise of heavy metal bands in the UK in the late 70’s and early 80’s, such as Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Grim Reaper, Saxon, Motorhead, Venom, and Raven.
For a pair of brothers well into their 60’s, Raven certainly rocked it for nearly 85 minutes! Including a couple of solos and a medley of cover songs, they did thirteen of their own, 60% of them from late 80’s and the rest from 2020’s (with nothing from the six albums in between).
Less than 24 hours later, DNA Lounge re-opened their doors, and the swampy atmosphere of New Orleans sludge metal took hold inside with an over-enthusiastic crowd at this extremely sold-out show. Inside, the air was thick and humid, the smoke machine provided that extra dark and dank atmosphere, and it was literally shoulder-to-shoulder for most of these proceedings. It was often difficult to decipher where the edge of the mosh pit was to the long and endless merchandise line that snaked out of DNA Pizza all the way back to the main bar for nearly the entire evening (Crowbar sold out of merch by the way!).
Bleeding Priest also reviewed the EyeHateGod / Crowbar and Raven / Nefarious shows. These too are worth the read…
