Tag: DTLA

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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: 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.

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