Psycho Las Vegas, August 16-18, Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada

August 29, 2019April 14, 2022 Wayne EdwardsElectric Wizard, Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, Opeth, Original Misfits, Psycho Las Vegas

   Does Las Vegas seem like a good place for a music festival? I wasn’t sure. The first thing I thought of was that music festivals are typically outdoors and, in August in Las Vegas, it is 100+ degrees every day. That doesn’t sound great. Besides the temperature, everything else seems perfect. Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the US. What’s not to like about that?
   There were four stages at the festival, three of which were indoors and air conditioned. So much for the heat. The fourth stage was outside at an artificial beach, but the music didn’t start there until the sun had sunk behind the tops of the surrounding buildings and, even though the temperature was still in the 90s, if the sun isn’t bearing down on you, 93 is not bad in the desert. The Beach Stage was elevated above a large pool, so, if you wanted, you could get in the water, enjoy a beverage, and watch the show. You could also just sit or stand in the sand. There was a Lounge Stage, which was just what it sounds like, a stage in a small lounge next to a bar in the casino. There is a House of Blues at the Mandalay Bay Resort and there was a stage in the club there with mostly standing areas and a bar on three sides. Then there was the main stage in the Events Center, which is a small arena with 12,000 seats. Four very different places for music, each with its own feel and vibe. One thing the stages did all have in common was the very dim lighting. Spot lights were not used – the only lights were from the stage riggings. Some of the bands used more direct light than others, but most all of them seemed darker than usual. The lighting difference really stands out if you’ve been going to festivals all summer because you are used to seeing all the stages in the sunshine until the last two bands of the day. Not at Psycho Las Vegas. Even the Beach Stage, the only one that was outside, seemed darker than usual because the music didn’t start there until dusk. I am not complaining about the lighting, I’m just noting how noticeable it was.
   In general, the atmosphere is very comfortable. You don’t get a sunburn and you are not sweating through your shorts. All the restrooms are in-doors with running water and no long lines to wait in. Food, refreshments, and casino gambling is all around. And if you want to take a break from the festival and hit The Strip, just walk out the door and there it is. Also, there is unlimited re-entry, something completely unheard of at other festivals. Come and go as you please. Go to your hotel room for a little while, go buy a Las Vegas souvenir, whatever you want, and then walk right back in. There are security checks at every stage entrance, but there was almost never a wait of more than a couple minutes to get through so coming and going was genuinely easy. The festival environment is unique at Psycho Las Vegas.
   All this is great but the most important thing is the music. The lineup at Psycho Las Vegas is unrivaled for heavy music. The headliners were Electric Wizard, a band that rarely plays in the US, the Original Misfits, who perform three or four shows every five years or so, and Opeth, who made their only US appearance of 2019 at the festival. Browsing through the rest of the lineup, you see all sorts of bands that do not appear on run-of-the-mill festival lineups like Goatwhore, Graveyard, High On Fire, Carcass, Tomb Mold, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, Kadavar, and on and on. If you are a heavy music fan, this is a festival you do not want to miss. One last crucial point: all the bands play long sets. Hardly any sets were less than 50 minutes and most were one hour or longer. The middle band in the lineup on the Events Center Stage played for 75 minutes. There are no 20 minute sets like you see at a lot of festivals, even for the opening acts.
   Let’s take a quick run around the grounds on each day and see what it was like to be there.
[Aside: Psycho Swim was a separate event that was held on Thursday evening before the big festival got going. I missed it, but the reports I got were that Lucifer was great and Corrosion of Conformity nearly caused a tsunami. See what happens when you don’t show up early? I won’t make that mistake next year.]
   Day 1. I was fairly disoriented to start with because the casino/resort/hotel/events center complex is gigantic. The map helped. I was there for two Day 1 bands in particular, Electric Wizard, which I had never seen before, and my favorite band of the last couple years, High On Fire. There was a lot of music to be heard, however, so I started with the Lounge Stage listening to Royal Thunder and LA Witch. Both were solid and I had my usual joy burst over the realization that there are so many good bands out there. Going to any of the large festivals you are not really taking much of a chance because all the bands are pros and they want to put on a great performance for their fans and for people who have never seen them before hoping they become fans. And you do have to make choices because some of the bands play at the same time. How do you choose? If you have a band you really like then you know where you’re going, right, but what about the toss-ups? The good news is there are no bad choices. More good news: if you are unhappy with your choice, just take a short walk over to another stage where a different band is playing.
   I saw all the acts on the main stage. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was like a psychedelic cross between Primus and Dr. John. Graveyard powered through a set full of highlights from their recent albums. Godspeed You! Black Emperor was … a lot. They had a video display that was odd and occasionally disturbing, and the music formed a loud sound front. The songs were long, 20 minutes each or so. The whole thing put me in a trance. High On Fire, one of the main reasons I came to this festival, gave a tremendous performance but were plagued by technical sound issues for most of the set, ones that were only really cleared up toward the end. They closed with “Snakes for the Divine,” and it roared. Electric Wizard are doom legends that have eluded me until this weekend. They played 90 minutes of blissful rumbling thunder. The perfect close to the first day and an excellent portent for the rest of the weekend.
   Remember the thing I said about choices? There were a couple to deal with. I missed Bad Religion because they were on at the same time as Electric Wizard. Likewise, I missed Yob because they overlapped by Godspeed You! Black Emperor and I needed some time to recover. I did see Goatwhore, a long-time favorite of mine, and they were fantastic. Playing in the House of Blues club to an enthusiastic crowd in a claustrophobic venue, the music coalesced into a powerful experience that was a festival highlight for me. Great band, fantastic performance.
   Day 2. I have seen Tomb Mold before and I knew I wanted to see them again so their set is how Day 2 started. In Tomb Mold, the drummer Max Klebanoff is also the singer and the band put up an astonishing set for the early crowd at the House of Blues. They were a blistering highlight to the entire festival. Another band flying under the radar that gave a stand-out performance was Triumph of Death. Billed as a Hellhammer tribute band, it was much more than that. Tom Gabriel Warrior, a founding member of the legendary band that was only around from 1982-1984, lead Triumph of Death in playing songs from Hellhammer that, for the most part, have never been performed live before. It was incredible to see the band, and especially Warrior himself, in their only US performance this year. And who knows, this might have been their only US performance ever.
   On the Events Stage, there were five bands in a row that made it hard to leave the arena. Old Man Gloom was a new one for me, and I like them so much I tried to buy a t-shirt, but they were sold out (lot of other people must have liked them, too). From their name alone you get a pretty good signal what their sound is like. Triumph of Death was next, then Carcass came on and made a point of announcing they were a Death Metal band not a Doom Metal band, apparently because of the heavy doom weighting to the lineup, but of course the fans didn’t need any apology. Their set was fast and hard and lead to the formation of a raucous pit. After Carcass was Clutch, a band that is completely different and a curiously good transition to the headliner. I usually see Clutch at least half a dozen times a year and they always give a great performance. Their Psycho Las Vegas show was a notch even higher, if that’s possible, and longer than they usually play at festivals so we all got to hear more songs.
   Originally Megadeth was supposed to headline Saturday, but they had to withdraw when Dave Mustaine found out he needed medical treatment for throat cancer. How do you replace Megadeth? You can’t, really, but you do need a big band with a huge draw to keep fans happy. The Original Misfits were the perfect choice. Glenn Danzig, Jerry Only, and Doyle lit up the arena and no one was disappointed. Again, there were significant sound problems, bad enough to cause Doyle to leave the stage for four songs, but things got straightened out and this Saturday night set is the one that many fans will say was the most memorable part of the festival.
   Day 3. Usually by Sunday of any given festival I am starting to drag a little, but not in Vegas. The comfort of the environment allowed me to wake up on Sunday like it was Saturday. The big bands on the final day for me were Opeth, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Power Trip, and Kadavar. And here I am going to lodge my only complaint about the scheduling: Power Trip played at the same time as Opeth. Now that one IS a tough choice. Opeth has to win that showdown, and that is fine, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little sore about missing Power Trip. Still, I will not recant my soap box oration that the choices are all right. It is not a perfect world, but it is a good one.
   Weedeater opened Sunday in the Events Center as a last minute replacement for Rotting Christ (note the blank space on the set times image), the latter band reportedly having visa issues that kept them from performing at the festival. The three-piece stoner band was a new experience for me so I was surprised when frontman Dixie Collins lamented how terrible they were between every song. They were not terrible. Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats followed and were sharp and stunning. Performing in the darkest surroundings of chronically dark stages, the band leaned in and shook the rafters. A top five set for sure. Beach House, an ambient, mellowish trio, was on the Events Stage while 1349, a very heavy band, was out on the Beach Stage. It was a disorienting juxtaposition, at least in my head, but the music they played was what I expected.
   Opeth, a band usually described these days as prog-metal but who started out as a straight forward death metal outfit, gave an authentic performance to a somewhat diminished Sunday evening crowd. Mikael Åkerfeldt, the lead singer, paused between songs for long reflections and ruminations about all sorts of things ranging from the evolution of the sound of the band, to wandering around the casino, to watching the Misfits the night before. They opened with “Sorceress,” a personal favorite of mine, so I was happy from the beginning, and the setlist ranged broadly across the band’s canon. For some people, Opeth seemed like a peculiar choice for the festival headliner, but to anyone who stayed around to see them play, they were the perfect fit.
   In the end, looking back from late Sunday night, Psycho Las Vegas turned out to be more than I expected, and I had high expectations. I was suspicious of the setting – a casino/resort – and it turned out to be great, better in many (maybe most) ways than the usual festival. I arrived with great anticipation, wanting to see and hear incredible performances by some of my favorite bands, including several I had not seen live before, and they all came through. Before I sat down to write this article, I asked the people I went with to the festival what their complaints were so I could stick it to the organizers in print, but they didn’t have any complaints. Yeah, I know this sounds like a paid endorsement, but it isn’t. I am going to Psycho Las Vegas from now on, every year, even if I have to sell blood to buy a ticket. I unhesitatingly recommend it.

Heavy Montreal – Here and Everywhere, Parc Jean-Drapeau, Montreal, July 27-28, 2019

August 5, 2019April 14, 2022 Wayne EdwardsHeavy Montreal 2019, Montreal, Slayer

There are a lot of music festivals out there. Are they all the same? And where does Heavy Montreal land in the mix? It all depends on what you are looking for in a festival.
Let’s confine ourselves to general rock festivals in the US and Canada (but mostly in the US). For example, I am leaving out Maryland Deathfest because, even though it is a great festival, it is too specific: Death Metal. I will compare Heavy Montreal to Aftershock, Inkcarceration, Sonic Temple, Rocklahoma, etc. Festivals like that.
What matters about a festival? I think these things are important: lineup, price, number of days, venue (and location), other cool stuff at the festival, food, and promoter policies. With these things in mind, let’s see how Heavy Montreal stacks up.
Lineup. Heavy Montreal has headliners just as prominent as any other festival. The festival headliner this year was Slayer doing its final lap on their farewell tour. The real strength in the acts they present lies in two characteristics: there are more heavy bands than at other festivals and there are always bands that no other festival has.

MONTREAL, QUE.: July 28, 2019– Slayer perform during the Heavy Montreal festival at Montreal’s Parc Jean Drapeau on Sunday July 28, 2019. (Tim Snow – @timsnowphoto)

Price. This festival is less expensive than other major festival, and by a considerable margin. General Admission passes and VIP are both cheaper, and recently, if you are traveling from the US, the exchange rate really helps you out because the US$1.00 is worth about C$1.32. More bang for your buck.
Number of days. Heavy Montreal is two days while many other festivals are three days. This difference partly accounts for the lower ticket price. However, the 77 Festival is held at the same location on the Friday before Heavy Montreal, and you can buy tickets as add-ons for a very modest price difference. If you want three days, you got it. 77 is a punk festival and the lineup is always impressive. It is a strong complement to Heavy Montreal.
Venue (and location). Montreal is a beautiful city with a European feel. There are endless art and cultural activities all year round, and excellent nightlife spots. Public transportation is easy to use, safe, and inexpensive. It is a great city to visit. The festival venue is Parc Jean-Drapeau, an attractive green park on an island in the St. Lawrence River that runs along the city. There is a Metro stop immediately at the entrance to Heavy Montreal – you can’t miss it. This unique and amazing place adds depth and ambience to the festival. There are other festivals in beautiful and special places, like Fire in the Mountains, for example, held on a ranch in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. Most festivals are situated more for access than for environment. It is truly something special when you both come together.
Other cool stuff at the festival. Some festivals offer other attractions besides the music. Inkcarceration has a expansive tattoo festival going on at the same time. Sonic Temple included beautiful art installations all over the festival grounds. This year, Heavy Montreal had professional wrestling – something I have never seen at any other festival. The live wrestling events drew a small but loyal and enthusiastic crowd who clearly knew the wrestlers involved because the cheered the heroes and booed the villains.
Food. The food is what I would describe as Canadian cuisine. Poutine plus food that has standard US Midwestern equivalents. Prices were good (especially with the exchange rate bump). Water was sold very inexpensively (C$2.00/bottle) and there were many hydration stations with free water – a very important and valuable benefit mostly absent or extremely limited at US festivals. Indeed, the water makes up for the limited food selections, in my view. The greatest food tragedy for me was the absence of Island Noodles! I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Promoter policies. The two complaints I hear most from fans about event policies are the bag policy (what bags you can carry into the venue) and ticket discounting. Heavy Montreal has a clear tier system for selling tickets, and they tell exactly how many tickets are available at each step. When one step sells out, then the price goes up. There is no mystery about it. They also allow VIP (called “Gold”) upgrades from GA tickets you have already bought, which is a rarity in the festival world. Some festivals have enraged fans by selling tickets at deep discounts near the start of the event in order to sell it out. Heavy Montreal does not do this. The bag policy is very relaxed compared to other festivals, and security is simplified so the lines move quickly. Overall, Heavy Montreal is much more fan-friendly than most other festivals.
To summarize in one phrase: Heavy Montreal is one of the top 5 music festivals in North America. If you can go every year, you should. I you can’t go every year, you have try it at least once and see what the fuss is all about. You won’t regret it.

Heavy Montreal – 1200-1900, Parc Jean-Drapeau, Montreal, July 27-28, 2019

August 1, 2019April 14, 2022 Wayne EdwardsHeavy Montreal 2019

It might be true that many fans – or even most – come to festivals mainly to see the headliners who play late in the day. If you watch the crowd all day, the venue fills up slowly as the clock crawls along so there does seem to be some truth to this proposition. There is nothing wrong with that if that’s what you want to do. The headliners are great and so it makes sense that they are the big draw. I am here to tell you, though, if you show up late or if you don’t travel around to the third and fourth stages, you are missing a lot. In fact, you are missing most of the music. Let’s take a fast-paced promenade through the festival grounds at Heavy Montreal from noon to seven and see what we can see.

SATURDAY
I started the day with Galactic Empire, a band I had never seen before. Let’s think about this for a minute. What could this band be about? Yep. Heavy guitar versions of Star Wars themes. A novelty act for sure, but undeniably a lot of fun, and check out the costumes. The music took a more serious turn next. Fever 333 burst onto the stage, as they always do, with a high energy, almost acrobatic set. Their music is a pounding fusion that surrounds you and their message is freedom and unity. You never want to leave a Fever 333 set early.
   One thing I always mention to people who have never been the Heavy Montreal is that it’s called HEAVY for a reason. While there are a wide variety of acts at the festival, there are more heavy bands here than at any other “general” rock festival in North America. Witness these three bands that played one after the other early in the afternoon: Harm’s Way, Anonymous, and Kataklysm. Power, speed, and aggression all around. You need to stop by a hydration station in between each of these sets.
   The ever-surprising Devon Townsend performed an “acoustic” set that was very relaxed and groovy. Sort of. Periodically, he would pause and request crowd participation that stood in stark contrast to the way he was playing – he would ask the crowd to scream in their best Death Metal voices one slogan or another. From this floating sense of conflicted merriment, I entered the comforting familiarity of Quiet Riot playing their hits. The current line-up sounds similar to the original but the passage of time has tweaked the outcome a little. It was a nice siesta, but then it was time for some more heavy.
   Rivers of Nihil is a band I have been following for a couple of years now and they were high on my list to see. Like all the Summer Slaughter bands, they played on the Scѐne du Jardin stage, and I think the demand for these bands was underestimated because the crowd always swelled to choke off the throughway between the other stages. We all got along, but it was a tight squeeze when Rivers of Nihil were roaring, and the same thing happened for The Faceless, Carnifex, Cattle Decapitation, and Dying Fetus. Then again, being shoulder to shoulder in the sun and the heat with a crowd of enthralled metal heads seeing and hearing one monster act after another is a pretty good way to spend a summer day.
   In the late afternoon and early evening the Cancer Bats took the stage, followed by Municipal Waste. Two more bucket list bands for me, the Cancer Bats are on the sludgy side and Municipal Waste on the thrash side. I’d seen videos and listened to the music but you have to see these bands live to get the full experience – a maxim that applies generally. These two bands and their styles are excellent complements to each other and it was great to see them perform close together.

SUNDAY
The first band up on Sunday was a Montreal band, Junkowl, who won a competition to get on the festival bill. They were great, making the most of this opportunity and playing to appreciative hometown fans. They were the perfect kickoff to the final day of Heavy Montreal. In the same slot on a different stage, Mountain Dust, another local band, played a totally different style of rock – that bluesy doom that is so popular these days. Heavy guitars and the occasion Korg blast was an eye opener for the early crowd. The other early heavy band I liked a lot was Dopethrone – I already talked about them in the previous post so take a look there (and enjoy this bonus Dopethrone photo).
   Last year at the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival I saw a band called Battle Beast I didn’t know anything about. They were not what I was expecting, playing stadium anthems in the Wooster Palladium. That was quite a show. A schism the band a few years ago lead to a phoenix rising called Beast in Black. Watching them play, I had a sense of déjà vu. Fist pumping arena sounds is what you get, and it was a nice addition to the variety basket. Beast in Black is a band from Finland with a Greek vocalist, and the next band I saw, Skálmöld, is from Iceland. Their performance sounded like what I would call folk metal. Being uncertain about my categorization, I looked up what the band says about their own music, which is described this way on their website: “Skálmöld plays music that could be described as Battle Metal, a potion of Epic Viking Metal, old school Death and Thrash Metal, entwined with the Icelandic heritage.” OK. Folk metal. It’s rock and roll whatever else you want to call it, and the band started their North American tour at the festival to rousing applause.
   The idea of musical fusion reaches a whole new level with Metalachi, the heavy metal mariachi band. Well, a better way to describe them is they are a mariachi style band that plays covers of heavy metal songs. Who do they cover? Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Slayer, Dio. They even performed a thought-provoking version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. They are 100% in and not fooling around. The crowd knew the songs by heart but they had never heard them played this way before.
   More traditional metal fair could be found in Corrosion of Conformity’s set. Since the reformation of the band with Pepper Keenan about five years ago, CoC has just been getting stronger. They played a tight forty minute set which included their classic “Albatross” and other familiar fan favorites. CoC always makes me think of Clutch because I saw them together a couple of times. Clutch played late in the early slot on Sunday as well, and I already talked about them in the previous post, so for now enjoy this bonus photo of Tim Sult.
   If you think that one thing missing from bands playing before 7:00PM is big production values, then you must not have seen In This Moment. They played for nearly an hour with their imposing stage set, dancers, smoke, and theatrics. Maria Brink’s big voice was turned up to full threat as she prowled the stage and demanded the crowd’s undivided attention.
   You can’t see every band at a festival. There are just too many and the whole festival experience can be a sensory overload. Still, it is definitely worth taking a chance on a few you haven’t seen before because you are bound to see something that will blow your mind and you will remember for a long time. That is what makes festivals different and special, and that is why we keep going to them. And you already bought the ticket so you might as well go early.