Psycho Las Vegas Photos

8/31/2016

Vegas is a strange land but I suppose there is no better spot for hosting an event of predominantly psyche/stoner/doom metal and its various offshoots. Yep, Jordan and I survived Psycho Las Vegas, where I overheard someone actually say, “Dude, I found a fossil, and it’s like, hellllla old!” Where the Hard Rock was thronged with denim and leather-clad aficionados all weekend, including a stage by the pool. Sure, the pool looked kinda brown, but, you know, rock ‘n’ roll! Where beers cost between $8 and $15—unless you could manage to sneak ‘em in. Although the preponderance of stony music was enough to leave my brain dripping out of my ears (and Sleep’s lower end may have caused a premature bowel evacuation), there were some notable standouts that stretched (or ignored) the genre: Midnight’s unrelenting masked assault, Lecherous Gaze’s freaking out of the squares, the Shrine’s hard rock approach, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s body paint, fire dancers, and sheer trippiness and Alice Cooper’s superfluous abundance of insane musicianship/showmanship. The lineup featured new, established, old and older bands—Blue Oyster Cult, Arthur Brown, Alice Cooper and Pentagram can be seen as progenitors or heavy influences in a lot of this stuff (and Sabbath, it goes without saying). Bands like Mudhoney are bridge crossers between psyche and metal and punk and Converge crossed over from the HC to eventually be accepted by the metal heads, and some of the established bands just don’t play that much or at all anymore—although Sleep considers themselves reunited and plays festivals, it wasn’t that long ago that everyone thought seeing them was a thing of the past. We stayed in a hotel with a bit of reputation for partying and prozzies, but it kind of worked in our favor as nobody seemed to mind our beer drinkin’ ‘til the wee hours. With literally dozens of bands to see over the weekend there was just no way to do it all—sorry to those we missed, but thanks to all for a good time. —Wez Lundry

Photos: Jordan Joseffer & Wez Lundry

Wez mudhoney