Reunited SF black metal band Ludicra plays final show at Oakland festival
OAKLAND -- Reunited San Francisco black metal mavericks Ludicra play their final show ever when they headline this outdoor two-day metal festival in Oakland that also features Bronx thrash legends Demolition Hammer, local heroes Old Grandad and Necrot and more.
One of a number of notable bands formed by prolific onetime SF guitarist John Cobbett -- he played with Gwar and SF punk band Osgood Slaughter before founding such formidable metal outfits as Unholy Cadaver, Hammers of Misfortune and supergroup Vhol -- Ludicra came together as a quartet in 1998, teaming the musician with Aesop Dekker (Hickey, Agalloch, Worm Ouroboros, Vhol and Khôrada) on drums, guitarist/vocalist Christy Cather and original bassist/vocalist Jesika Christ, who had a hand in writing the band's early songs despite leaving a year later.
The band would expand to a quintet after Christ's departure with the addition of singer Laurie Sue Shanaman and bassist Ross Sublett (aka Ross Sewage of Exumed, Impaled and Ghoul). The band played frequently in the Bay Area honing its corrosive onslaught ahead of its recorded debut, 2002's Hollow Psalms on Life Is Abuse Records. Typical of the wide-ranging sounds featured in Cobbett's other projects, the album drew elements of thrash, doom and prog into Ludicra's ambitious, avant-garde style of black metal.
Shanaman's intense vocal-chord shredding and the complex riff architecture created by Cobbett and Cather anchored the band's sophomore effort and first recording for Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, Another Great Love Song, two years later. Balancing a dark-hearted mayhem with dynamic songwriting that sometimes recalled prog-influenced Swedish giants Opeth, the album avoided the satanic subject matter of most black metal in favor of an emotional, almost existential despair. The songs featured Cather and Shanaman moving easily from tandem feral growling to ethereal harmonizing, alternately giving the songs a desperate edge and flashes of melancholic beauty.
A self-titled three song EP would follow with the CD-ROM release including videos for a number of previously released tunes before Ludicra offered up its second album for Alternative Tentacles. Entitled Fex Urbis Lex Orbis (a Latin quotation meaning "Scum of the city, law of the world" made famous by Victor Hugo). the recording found the band's lyrical focus on urban decay and societal malaise while highlighting some of Cobbett's most intricate music yet.
The band continued on this thematic path for 2010's The Tenant for Profound Lore Records that many would hail as Ludicra's bleak masterpiece. Inspired by the global economic collapse and the growing gulf between the wealthy and the poor in the Bay Area (a gulf that has only widened in the decade plus since), the album takes an unflinching look at homelessness, suicide and the struggle to survive and stay sane in the "narrow rented tombs" described on the album's closing title track.
Despite the glowing reviews The Tenant earned, the group would split up the following year. Members would turn their energies to their other projects and start new bands -- Shanaman and Cather would start their own experimental black metal outfit Ails -- and long resisted the entreaties of fans and metal festivals to reunite. At least they did until last fall when the band was announced as one of the headlining acts at the 2022 Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. The performance featured a special appearance by band collaborator and Bay Area musician, cellist Jackie Perez-Gratz.
While Ludicra have played a few shows since a powerful hometown performance at the Great American Music Hall last fall -- including the band's only appearance in New York City in 13 years and a set at the Oblivion Access festival in Austin, Texas last June and a return to the Northwest this weekend for two Sabertooth 2023 dates in Portland and Tacoma -- for this outdoor show in Oakland put on by Underworld Opera, Oakland punk and metal imprint Tankcrimes and Ungaffable Productions in partnership with the adjacent Line 51 Brewing at 3rd Street and Castro, the band closes out two days of brutal metal bands from the Bay Area and beyond.
Topping the bill on Sunday will be Bronx-based thrash favorites Demolition Hammer. Founded in 1986 by bassist/vocalist Steve Reynolds and guitarist James Reilly, the group recorded a pair of well-regarded demos and their debut album Tortured Existence that came out in 1991. Released during the height of the grunge explosion, the band's sophomore effort the following year -- the blistering Epidemic of Violence -- is still hailed as one of the great East Coast thrash albums of its time. The band would make some concessions to the sounds of the time with the slower, Pantera/Machine Head-influenced grooves heard on Time Bomb in 1994, but split up the following year.
Despite the dissolution of the group, there was enough interest in Demolition Hammer for Century Media to compile their difficult-to-find music in a compilation that featured some demo material. Reynolds and Reilly would reunite the band in 2016 and have been playing metal festivals on both sides of the Atlantic ever since. The balance of the Sunday bill features several notable acts on the Northern California black/death metal scene with appearances by Santa Cruz crew Decrepit Birth, Sacramento's Psychosomatic and Oakland's own Vorlust.
Monday's bands also includes rising Oakland metal trio Necrot. The band started in seven years ago in Oakland by talented Bay Area death metal players Luca Indrio (the band's bassist who also plays in Acephalix and Vastum) and Chad Gailey (who also plays drums in noted local outfits Mortuous and Atrament), with Saviours guitarist Sonny Reinhardt joining the following year.
The trio recorded several demo tapes and built up a loyal Bay Area fan base with its raw, blackened songs and the blast furnace intensity of its live shows, eventually getting signed to Oakland-based punk/metal imprint. Tankcrimes would compile the tunes from the band's demos for the 2016 release The Labyrinth.
Two years later, Necrot released it's proper debut album Blood Offering on the label, garnering widespread critical praise for the corrosive collection of punk-tinged death metal. Since then, Necrot has only raised it's profile with appearances at major festivals like the Northwest Terror Fest and Psycho Las Vegas as well as a five-week tour of Europe in fall of 2018. They released their latest Tankcrimes album Mortal in 2020.
Joining Ludicra and Necrot for Monday's line-up will be another reunited SF favorite, Old Grandad. A veteran mainstay of the San Francisco underground metal scene in the '90s, the headbanging power trio was founded in 1994 when former Epidemic guitarist Erik Moggridge teamed with ex-Warfare D.C. (and current Death Angel) drummer Will Carroll and bassist Max Barnett, Old Grandad appealed to a wide range of local heavy-music fans. The band's over-the-top paeans to drugs and Satan featured a unique mix of Sabbathy sludge, thrash-metal tempos, growling, three-way death-metal vocals and Pink Floyd-inspired psychedelia.
Old Grandad were a constant presence on the Bay Area metal scene, playing frequent shows on both sides of the Bay Bridge and occasionally venturing outside of the region. The trio self-released their debut album Vol. 666 in 1997, spotlighting the group's tongue-in-cheek humor and ferocious riffs. The follow-up OGD EP/San Fran666co Bootleg featured a mix of new drug-obsessed songs ("I'm Frying on Acid," "The Highs That Bind") and live recordings.
After the band put out their second full-length The Last Upper through M.I.A. Records in 1999 that explored longer, more psychedelic song structures, Old Grandad went on an extended break. It would be several years before the band reconvened to play live, eventually recording Hocus Corpus for Double Down Records that was released in 2005. The album's hilariously titled opener "I Want Me to Want You" showed that the OGD cornerstones of tag-team death-metal growling, monolithic riffs and warped lyrics were still intact, even as they explored more melodic vocals.
While the band still played sporadically, as time passed, the members focused on other outlets. Moggridge would relocate to Portland, OR, where he ended up working with Northwestern doom duo Bell Witch (singing on two albums) and eventually launching his solo acoustic-focused psych project Aerial Ruin. Meanwhile Carroll and Barnett would stay in San Francisco, with both players putting in time as members of Hammers of Misfortune. The busy Carroll played with a number of bands in addition to scoring his most high-profile gig yet as the drummer for Death Angel for the past ten years.
The trio's long silence finally ended in 2019 when the band started posting an onslaught of old show flyers and press clippings from the '90s and beyond on its Facebook page earlier. That spring, the threesome headed up to Portland to record its first new album in 14 years with past producer/collaborator Guy Higbey. Released the following fall, the group's stellar new self-titled effort offers up a less sludgy sound without sacrificing any of Old Grandad's trademark corrosive guitar onslaught and pummeling rhythms on opening track "Patient as a Pestilence" and the pummeling "Offering." The epic tune "It's Not the Same Here Anymore" may be the most poignant metal ode to pre-gentrification San Francisco ever written. Oakland black metallers Penury (featuring several members of local heroes Bädr Vogu) and fellow East Bay act Wretched Stench warm up the crowds on Monday afternoon.
Two-Day Metal Fest with Ludicra, Demolition Hammer, Old Grandad and more
Sunday-Monday, Sept. 3-4, 1 p.m. (3 p.m. Sunday) $37-$66
3rd and Castro in Oakland