I've gone to 50 concerts so far this year. That's 136 bands playing 149 sets at 33 different venues. Here are some of the best moments.
Corima, 2/27/2025 at 2220 Arts + Archives
I looked like a cat entranced by a laser pointer. That was the spinning state of my stupid, planetoid-sized noggin as I tried to follow the Los Angeles zeuhl band's circular progressions — the head, it spins round, like Ratt’s tour plane descending in a death spiral. Corima was all hands on deck the first time I caught the quintet this year, with violinist/vocalist Andrea Calderón making the trip from Mexico to muscle through these magnetic compositions that come off like a meadow-y Magma, or if Happy Family had more of a folk focus. (The second time I saw the band in June, it was an understandably slimmed-down, near-instrumental quartet that played up its brutal prog side — closer to Upsilon Acrux, which, incidentally, opened the February show.) The music was so dense and intricately woven. It was a tapestry, yes — a full-on story that could be unfurled across many walls — but it was also like drinking a pot of coffee and then snuggling under a weighted blanket, this contradictory sensation of heightened relaxation. Calderón and keyboardist Paco Casanova traded vocals like the Vanders, bassist Ryan Kamiyamazaki and drummer Sergio Sanchez Ravelo whipped around like rhythmic murmurations, and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi roamed through the vastly constructed musical countryside, lending support or taking the shredding lead. For an hour, you felt lovingly jostled, like the ball in a pinball machine, banking off of bumpers and getting flipped into slingshots, all of it lighting up more of your mind meat. Glorious.
Lankum, 2/28/2025 at The Belasco
Leave it up to Lankum to make a big theater feel intimate. For an hour, the four folkers, with an assist from a drummer, shrunk the vast confines of The Belasco down to an arm around your shoulder. As I wrote earlier this year, part of that intimacy came from Lankum's execution:
The quintet, the OG four plus a drummer, were tight but in that folk way where there's a pleasing looseness in the belt area that kept things from getting too stuffy. Take the band's opener, "The Wild Rover." Radie Peat's keening vocals cut through the strummy drone, that quintessential low thrum that sounds almost industrial in nature. But the four-part harmony — Peat, Daragh Lynch (guitar), Ian Lynch (uilleann pipes, concertina, tin whistle), and Cormac Mac Diarmada (fiddle, viola) — sounded so human, so lived in, like hearing the town elder spin a yarn that has entered itself into the location's lore.
That's Lankum's strength: storytelling, taking these traditionals, originals, and covers and turning them into these aurally evocative narratives that have the depth of a novel. The vocal-less end of "The Wild Rover," with Diarmada's sawing fiddle, the pounding percussion, and Peat's humming harmonium, is so rich with sonic details, giving the song's epilogue a tangible quality, almost like you're turning the pages of a book. Hearing it on record is one thing. In person, it just swallows you up.
But there was something ineffable at play, too: this 'we're all in this together' empathy that stretched across centuries. Said Lynch between songs, "It's all about why it's a bad idea to get in league with people who murder innocent people … It's a simple humanitarian truth that even the illiterate peasants who wrote this song 300 years ago could fucking grasp." The crowd cheered. Indeed, that cold gust of reality somehow made the theater feel even warmer; though the band knew it would be sending us back out into that cold, uncaring world, at least it could provide temporary catharsis, a musical salve, something to quell the throbbing nerve that otherwise overpowers the rest of one's senses. It has been a rough year, a soul-deadening deluge of psychic damage. But for the hour Lankum had us, it felt good to feel again.
Trichomoniasis, 3/1/2025 at Towne Ave
Hey, remember when Hanatarash drove that excavator through a venue? Yeah, that. Trichomoniasis didn't, you know, do that, but it sure sounded like it did that. Hell of a way to lose most of your hearing. This was one of my most anticipated shows of the year, and, surprise, surprise, NorCal's Trichomoniasis was as advertised, turning Towne Ave into the makeshift crematorium it gurgled about on, uh, Makeshift Crematoria. The improv gore/death two-piece ballooned into a three-piece with a bassist bud, and erected a slimy wall of gutter-born grossness. Imagine if one miked the sound inside of a meat car as a train violently derailed: loud, grinding, and wet. Guitarist/singer Hunter Petersen and drummer Faustino Rodriguez pried open a portal to the gunk dimension, a demented plane governed not by the laws of gravity, but sputum-encrusted gutturals. Petersen projectile puked pitch-shiftedly while laying down guitar-teacher-impressing riffment. Rodriguez beasted, blowing up the kit like someone trying to break into a bank vault with a bandolier of bombs. "Disgorge getting invited on a G3 tour" is fine enough shorthand, but it doesn't really convey the 30 minutes of miasmic mania. Order up, sickos. Time to chug the goo.
Meshuggah, 4/9/2025 at Kia Forum
Wasn't crazy about the setlist: No "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" was baffling, like lining up for a wide-open game-winning shot and eating the ball instead. Still, the very Meshuggahian spectacle of it all was enough to have this show permanently embedded in my memory, forcibly flushing less useful information like calculus or how to talk to people. Following the requisite trepanation of "Careless Whisper," we got lights, lights, and more lights, strobes upon strobes, like a misfiring teleporter or a version of Zeus that accidentally wrote his shopping list on LSD-soaked blotter paper. From where I was perched, it was like getting free laser eye surgery — maybe my third eye finally has 20/20 vision. That said, I'll be damned if I didn't say the 'Pink Floyd at the observatory' fluorescent theatrics didn't make a song like "Rational Gaze" hit extra hard, the pew-pews highlighting the compound fracture snap of that groove. Ultimately, Meshuggah is so tight that seeing the Swedes live is like listening to the CD on a sound system that registers on the Richter scale. However, the boom helped to sell some of the newer material that I had found tepid on record. Like, "Violent Sleep of Reason" isn't that bad when it's milling your bones into meal. But yeah, I was there for the hits, and when I heard the opening spasm of "Future Breed Machine," it was like taking a dog off its leash. Possibly the best six minutes of the year.
Guck, 4/13/2025 at The LodgeRoom
The thrill is watching Guck win over new comers. This was the biggest room I've seen the LA noise rock band play, opening for the skyrocketing Snooper. The quintet was, as ever, undaunted. An LA crowd is typically apathetic toward openers, if they're even there at all; the city lives up to its fashionably late ribbing. A full crowd before the headliner is rarer than Hollywood drivers recognizing your humanity. But this night, enough early birds took roost that I felt folks pressed up against me. Lucky them. Guck was on fire, although neither did monitor a spontaneously catch flame nor did an enterprising skateboarder do a kickflip in the pit. Be that as it may, the band's power was enough of a zap, humming like an overclocked EMP machine. And you couldn't help but witness the reactions of the freshly converted, that flash of recognition, that those reflexively nodding their heads were about to remember this band's name. It's like clockwork, automatic, like day turning into night and DTLA smelling like piss in the summer: You know Guck will connect. And it's not like when you're showing someone something cool; no, it's not like when you're waiting patiently for signs of life when you play someone your favorite song, those seemingly endless seconds when vulnerability starts to curdle into self-doubt. No, this is like when you crack the joint that suffered that old sports injury, the crunch that immediately paints a wordless reply on people's faces. Just, you know, in a good way. Guck is a good oof, I guess. It at least elicits the same DeAndre Jordan post-dunk expression. Anyway, I've written about this band more than any other in the past year, so I'll spare you the usual superlatives. That said, I will write that there's a reason I've seen 'em eight times and counting. Oh, and the album? It's real. Behold:
Portraits of Past, 5/3/2025 at The LodgeRoom
The day of, I checked the Saetia show flyer so I could post it on my Instagram stories. There was a new name on the bill: Portraits of Past. Yes, that Portraits of Past, the seminal screamo band that hadn't been on a stage in 16 years. Turns out, the quartet was playing a surprise warm-up set before headlining Yr Renaissance Fest later that month. (I also went to that. Good, but weird. The Spirit of Versailles played. I overheard kids calling them a "legacy band," and my back exploded into dust.) Fast forward to that night, and surprise indeed, I was hearing the opening strains of "Bang Yer Head," one of the most impactful screamo songs of my life. Sure, the San Franciscans were shaking off the rust, getting back into the groove of facing an audience, but nothing could minimize the magic of hearing that instantly recognizable guitar tone. Am I here? I thought, as the intro gave way to that first frantic section when the band turns into a blur of heartfelt angst, the cacophonous chaos of reality's many dice rolls. And speaking of reality, it was surreal not hearing these songs without the crackle of vinyl or the pops of badly encoded MP3s that were my History 101 class when I was enrolled in the University of Soulseek. I mean, that's why I go to shows: the be there, to be present, and to have the present make the old feel new again because, well, when you're playing music live, it's always new in a way. Anyway, I've seen a lot of the old-school screamo luminaries this year: the aforementioned Saetia and The Spirit of Versailles, as well as Swing Kids and Orchid. "Yr renaissance" is right: screamo's moment has boomeranged back around and is now embraced by kids who look like a 2000s Hot Topic fell on them. And true, those were objectively better sets, turning back the clock without dyeing the grey brought on by the intervening decades. However, this was my favorite. Twenty-four hours before, I wasn't expecting to see my favorite screamo band. And then, there I was, whispering "holy shit" under my breath.
Fu Manchu, 5/31/2025 at Pappy and Harriet's
Friends, it has been a long, long year. Headlong into one of the worst bouts of depression and anhedonia I've had in a few years, I refound clarity and focus thanks to, let me check my notes here, the transcendentally fuzzy Fu Manchu. The long-running rockers played a packed Pappy and Harriet's and backed up a Brink's truck of mint riffs. Of the two times I've seen the band in the past year-ish, this was the better set, and not just because we were treated to the heroic bong blast and relative rarity of the extra verdant and leafy "Tilt." For one, the sound was dialed in, turning Scott Hill, Brad Davis, and Bob Balch's strings into a stoned-out tempest that blew your hair back. Second, the performances were ferocious, particularly Scott Reeder drumming with such force, you felt every fill inside your skull. Third, the crowd was both buzzed and buzzing. This was a room full of Fu Manchu ultras, shaking the walls while singing the chorus to "Superbird." During the five-song(!) encore, the gentleman in front of me started losing his mind to "Boogie Van." "This is my childhood," he screamed. May we all find our way back to "Boogie Van."
Citric Dummies, 6/1/2025 at Non Plus Ultra
Twenty minutes of an absolute ass kicking. Hell yeah. Capping off a weekend that made me care about music again was this set, a hard-punching epiphany, the whole reason I decided to hook this blog up to a car battery and jump start its dead carcass despite me clearly and wholly losing my writing fastball. The Minneapolis trio, as the branding and pseudonyms hint at, is kind of like an alternate version of Land Speed Record-era Hüsker Dü if it were born out of the pages of Army Man. The wit, it be acerbic. A tasting pour of song titles: "I'm Gonna Kill Myself (At the Co-op)," "I'm Gonna Punch Larry Bird," and the entirety of 2020's Die Nasty, which is pure SEO-baiting bliss sporting classics like "Punk Labels Accepting Demos" and "DMV Wait Time." But Citric Dummies' bread and butter is its bracing battering. The band plays like someone cut its break lines, plowing through these KBD-quality rippers with the angel-dusted energy of speed demons compelled to cram one more song onto a side of a 7". The only break is for banter: "Oh no, we're losing them!" they cracked as someone tried to slink away to the bathroom that was hidden under a sculpture of Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple. Can't beat a good band/venue tag team.
Gong, 6/23/2025 at The Wayfarer
It's hard to call Gong a zombie band. There have been so many versions of the Canterbury prog outfit — Pierre Moerlen's Gong, Gongzilla, Mother Gong, etc. — each requiring a flowchart detailing which digressive iteration even contains co-founders Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth. And, yes, after Allen died in 2015 and Smyth in 2016, that was it for anyone with a link to Gong's "classic" era. But before he passed, Allen sent an email to players then-staffing the venerable psych rock troop and asked them to keep going. So, here we are, a slightly less goofball and gnome-ish Gong fronted by The Monsoon Bassoon's Kavus Torabi (who also has had turns in Cardiacs and Guapo) and with Violeta de Outono's Fabio Golfetti on lead guitar. (Bassist Dave Sturt is the band's longest-serving member, hopping aboard in 2009.) As expected, the post-Allen Gong leaned on post-Allen material, playing a number of cuts from 2016's Rejoice! I'm Dead! and 2023's Unending Ascending. However, the five-piece did dig deep into the discography bag for "Master Builder," and, to close out the two-song encore, "You Can't Kill Me." Those familiar jams got the audience to pop, but Gong's highlights all came from it tearing through the new material, particularly a muscular version of "Rejoice!" There's just something so primal about hearing a loud-ass band reveling in its loudness, even when that band is dealing in tricky time signatures and intricate interplay. Of course, Gong was also dynamic, using that loudness to accentuate its quietude, taking its time exploring the serene celestial, especially during "My Sawtooth Wake" from 2019's The Universe Also Collapses. Even if some in the crowd got restless during those extended forays into third-eye prying, they knew the crunch of fuzzy guitars, the low-end bath of bass, the wump and thump of drums, and the syrupy honk of sax would soon be on the way again to pulp their melons. It's what Allen wanted.
Archagathus, 6/29/2025 at 1720
"Mincecore means fuck ICE," guitarist/vocalist Joe Warkentin, whom I also caught this year as part of Raw Addict, screamed before Archagathus played its first note. It was the start of a list. Other things mincecore means: Fuck homophobia, fuck transphobia, fuck fascism. It was a good list. And then the Canadian quartet got down to business, steamrolling the crowd with grinding blasts and oompah slowdowns. It was pure mince in the many-split-ed Agathocles mold, just with the extremity nudged up, making the grind extra grindy and the gore extra moist. I'm not usually a mince-head, but Archagathus's songwriting is stronger than most: I mean, there were like, distinguishable riffs. A lot of them. And the crowd responded. Soon, a circle pit grew like a category five hurricane, and re-energized fest participants started diving from the stage like chicks making that first leap of faith from the nest. About as graceful, too. While rushing toward Valhalla, one kid accidentally whacked Warkentin's pedal board, turning the pitch-shifted vocals into a Dalek-esque whine. Didn't matter. Mincecore means fuck it, the show goes on, too.
***
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