Psycho Las Vegas 2017 Highlights and Lowlights

Chris Sarda
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read

Psycho Las Vegas took place over four nights the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino August 17th through the 20th. While mostly considered a doom metal festival, in truth the lineup contained a lot of different genres including Ethiopian Jazz, classic rock, art rock, prog not to mention the many other sub-genres of metal like black metal, death metal and the things that can only labeled “hard to define”.

The festival was a success and if you paid the ticket price then you know the bands were worth your time.

Highlight- Mothership opened the main portion of the festival with a fun riff filled Angus Young inspired set.

Highlight- Wolves in the Throne Room a band whose music feels like a damp autumn forest at midnight actually worked in 100 degree desert setting at 2pm.

Highlight- Aaron Turner showed up to deliver his five lines during Chelsea Wolfe’s set and added an intensity to a set that was fuzzy and down. “Fuzzy and down” being a compliment here.

Lowlight-Melvins are one of my favorite bands ever, but they’re getting stale. They used be unpredictable but they’ve dialed it in the last few albums and it seems like those are the songs they’re playing.

Highlight-Khemmis is fucking awesome. In a climate where there’s just not enough time to give bands deep multiple listens I’m lucky I was able to do that with Khemmis they almost floated under the radar.

Lowlight-I missed Sleep because Vhol was playing

Highlight-I got to see Vhol

Highlight-After Aaron Turner’s short cameo during Chelsea Wolfe’s set all hell broke loose when he plugged in and performed his Sumac set. Sumac’s brand of noise is my kind of music.

Lowlight-I was too tired to enjoy Black Anvil, one of the bands I had marked as a definite watch. Also the New Yorker girls who came with the band that were complaining non-stop.

Highlight-Cough was monstrous and the older people that were around me (probably waiting to see Diamondhead, who were scheduled next) hated them.

Highlight-Myrkur has an incredible amount of charisma. Her screams when they happened were mind blowing and her performance was memorable.

Lowlight-Myrkur didn’t give us enough metal screech and also she didn’t have background singers for this set which would have really added to her mystique.

Highlight-Carcass inspired the first pit I saw of the weekend. It was nice to get some technical death metal from the masters of technical death metal amid black metal influenced acts and Doom riffs.

Highlight- Weedeater’s fans. Right after I’d decided that Doom/Stoner riffs don’t insight madness and movement Weedeater’s crowd proved me wrong. They put on an incredible show.

Lowlight-There were people there who legitimately wanted to only see Gojira and everything else was ehh to them.

Highlight-Gojira’s riffs translated great live at the Joint. They played an intense set that kept me excited the whole way through.

Highlight-I finally got to see Neurosis and they were great.

Lowlight-I lost my phone during the Neurosis set

Highlight-I found it the next day. Thanks Sophia.

Highlight-Zeal and Ardor freaked me out with their schtick and I was afraid it wouldn’t work live. It did work live.

Lowlight-Abbath appeared to be playing an intense set that made me want to march on mainland Europe, but I was busy looking/worrying about my phone so I missed most of it.

Highlight-Cult of Luna played some great songs.

Lowlight-There was some sound issue where Julie Christmas left the stage for awhile and Cult of Luna had to cut their set short.

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Chris Sarda

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Music Newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/notpartofyourscene Anti-niche: I tweet about languages, sports, finance, music and all kinds of absurd human things

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