Heavy Psych Sounds Festival brings 2 days of monolithic riffs to San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- A two-day blowout of heavy psychedelia, stoner rock and sludge metal returns to San Francisco this weekend when the Heavy Psych Sounds Fest brings Bongzilla, Dead Meadow, Danava, Nebula, Hot Lunch and more to an outdoor stage at Thee Parkside.
Organized by noted Italian psychedelic rock imprint Heavy Psych Sounds, the festival first came to the Bay Area in 2018 in partnership with local show promoter and design company Subliminal SF. The epic weekend of heavy music marked the only two-day stop for the inaugural year of the U.S. edition of the festival featuring headliners Red Fang and Nebula along with a host of other acts taking over the Bottom of the Hill for a full weekend of loudness.
While the second edition of the festival scheduled for 2020 was derailed by the pandemic, reduced COVID concerns have allowed organizers to put together a new line-up of bands for the two-day celebration of heaviness that will take place outside at Thee Parkside on Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately, the risks taken by touring bands are once again coming into play, with four of the bands scheduled for Saturday -- Weedeater, High Reaper, Butthole Surfers/Melvins bassist J.D. Pinkus and local band HTSOB -- all having to bow out due to testing positive while on the road. However organizers were able to pull a hat out of their rabbit (as it were), finding several quality bands to fill in -- desert-rock all-stars the Freeks featuring former Fu Manchu/Nebula drummer Ruben Romano and ex-Monster Magnet guitarist Ed Mundell, and local acts Theya and Highwinds -- so the show can go on. Sadly, the COVID hits kept coming, with the Freeks being forced to cancel even more last minute due to yet another case of the accursed virus. An adjusted updated schedule for the festival appears below.
The festivities actually kick off Friday night with a pre-party at Thee Parkside featuring headliners Older Sun along with two new local bands. Making riff-driven monolithic tunes indebted to the classic '60s and '70s sounds of Cream, Free and Montrose since 2012, the band released their debut album in 2018 on Anchorite Recordings after issuing a pair of singles for Valley King Records. That album marked the end of a chapter for the band, presenting its last songs recorded with departing lead singer Chris Wagner. The group has since expanded to a quintet and is now fronted by new singer Kelsey Guntharp.
The other two acts playing Friday are newly minted all-star aggregations of Bay Area metal and heavy-rock players. Vindula is fronted by Susie McMullan of acclaimed SF doom juggernaut Brume and features members of Two Gallants, Disastroid and Squalus, while Maggus makes its live debut with musicians from Hazzard's Cure, Androgygnar, Badr Vogu, Owl and Ansia.
Saturday at noon, the gates open for the main event with the live music beginning at 1 p.m. Late festival additions Theya and Highwinds will play first before sets Texas riff rockers Warlung and local favorites Hot Lunch. A force on the San Francisco underground scene for going on 15 years, the band was founded by singer Eric Shea after the split of his potent retro-rock outfit Parchman Farm in 2006.
Shea managed to put together an all-star quartet of talented players, including former Mensclub guitar hero Aaron Nudelman and the pulverizing rhythm section of drummer Rob Alper -- ex-The Sermon (he also played guitar with Sacto garage-punks SLA and is currently plays in agit-protopunk band Very Paranoia) -- and bassist Charlie Karr, who was best known for his work with the Alternative Tentacles band Harold Ray Live in Concert.
Unlike the many acts who mostly mimic the sonic template of influential early '70s proto punk/metal bands like Blue Cheer, Grand Funk Railroad and the MC5, Hot Lunch wove in elements of skate punk, psychedelia and prog rock into their unique sound. Over the course of its 16 years of of making music, the quartet has released a number of singles and EPs in addition to a pair of acclaimed albums -- most recently their 2019 sophomore effort Seconds on Tee Pee Records. Though Shea and Alper have both relocated outside of the Bay Area in recent years, Hot Lunch continues to reform Voltron-like to storm stages here and abroad.
Saturday's line-up will be rounded out by New Jersey heavyweights the Atomic Bitchwax (which also features guitarist Ed Mundell, doing double duty after playing with the Freeks earlier) and headlining Madison-based Bongzilla, who released their latest fuzzed-out sludgefest of an album Weedsconsin last year on Heavy Psych Sounds Records. It marked the band's first full-length effort in 16 years following an extended hiatus.
On Sunday, the headbanging resumes at 1 p.m. with performances by fiery local noise/sludge merchants Disastroid -- whose corrosive sound has as much to do with early '90s Amphetamine Reptile and Touch & Go punk as it does with stoner rock --former Bay Area residents and currently LA-based stoner/psych power trio Mountain Tamer, Spokane, WA-based Sabbath worshippers Kadabra and SoCal sludge/metal crew -16- leading up to an anticipated set of grungy, heavy psychedelia from Portland, OR band Hippie Death Cult.
Next up is fellow Portland, OR psychedelic glam/prog/metal outfit Danava. Led by guitarist/singer Gregory Meleney aka Dusty Sparkles, the group became a staple of metal and stoner-rock tours in the late 2000s, hitting the road with the likes of Voivod, Acid Mothers Temple, Melvins and Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats over the years. While they haven't released any new music since their blistering Tee Pee Records single "At Midnight You Die" in 2016, the band's always intense stage performance is sure to make them a Sunday highlight at the festival.
One of the early exponents of stoner rock returns to SF for Heavy Psych Sounds when SoCal greats Nebula takes the stage. Founded by guitarist Eddie Glass and aforementioned drummer Ruben Romano when they split from seminal SoCal stoner quartet Fu Manchu after contributing to the band's first three albums in 1997, Nebula mined a similar but more expansive style of Stooges-influenced heavy psychedelia on its early EPs for Relapse Records and Man's Ruin. The band's popularity would only grow after releasing albums for Sub Pop and Liquor & Poker through the 2000s before going on hiatus .
Glass would put together a new line-up of the group in 2017, with Heavy Psych Sounds releasing the band's first new album in a decade when it issued Holy S--t in 2019 to solid reviews. Last year, the group put out a new live recording as part of the Stoned and Dusted Festival's pandemic concert series filmed in the Mojave Desert and released on vinyl, CD and blu-ray.
The Heavy Psych Sounds festival will come to a close Sunday with Tempering hefty, bong-hazed riffs with equal doses of dreamy guitar drones and transporting melodies, talented power trio Dead Meadow has been making its unique style of heavy psychedelic rock for over two decades. Founded in Washington, D.C. in 1998 by guitarist/singer Jason Simon, bassist Steve Kile and drummer Mark Laughlin, Dead Meadow crafted a sound that managed to appeal to Sabbath-worshipping metal fans, greybeard hippies and shoe-gazing indie kids alike.
Built around Simon's languid, fuzzed-out guitar (and fueled by liberal use of his wah-wah pedal), the trio's self-titled debut album on Fugazi bass player Joe Lally's stoner-rock focused label Tolotta Records fit in comfortably with the imprint's other releases by Philly-based instrumentalists Stinking Lizaveta and several of doom icon Scott "Wino" Weinrich's bands. Gaining momentum, the band quickly followed up with a second studio album -- Howls from the Hills -- for Tolotta as well as a live album produced and mixed by neo-psych maven Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre that documented one of drummer Laughlin's last shows with the group before leaving to attend law school.
The band would move to indie label Matador Records for Shivering King and Others in 2003. That album showed Simon and company further refining their deft touch with hazy atmospheres and sprawling psychedelic guitar epics. Dead Meadow would add second guitarist Cory Shane for the recording of their next collection of songs -- Feathers in 2005, but that album found the group in it's most restrained and pop-minded mode yet.
While the expanded line-up did not last beyond that album and tour (Shane would depart in 2007), the trio would soldier on, relocating to Los Angeles and exploring new creative avenues including the live film/soundtrack project Three Kings in 2010, a brief collaboration with like-minded Australian guitarist Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother and a reunion with original drummer Laughlin. While there were occasional tours after the group issued it's 2013 double album opus Warble Womb to keep fans satisfied, Dead Meadow in 2019 marked two decades of making music with its first new album in five years, The Nothing They Need.
Featuring contributions by former guitarist Shane and all three of the band's drummers including new timekeeper Juan Londono, the latest record finds the crew churning out some inspired heavy psychedelic rock that shows a significant debt to the sounds of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. The band has yet to issue a follow-up to that studio album, but last year Dead Meadow partnered with Austin, TX-based psych festival Levitation to release a spectacular live performance recorded at the Pillars of God outdoor amphitheater at Camp Mozumdar in San Bernardino in 2020 that featured returning drummer Mark Laughlin back behind the kit.
In addition to the epic line-up of heavy psychedelia and stoner rock, the HPS Fest block party will feature vendors selling records and clothing, food from Thee Parkside kitchen and full bar. Attendees should note that the fest will be all cash, but there will be ATMs available. For more info and tickets, visit the festival's website.
Heavy Psych Sounds Festival
Saturday-Sunday, May 28-29, 12 p.m. $50 (two-day pass $80)
Outdoors at Thee Parkside
