Floating Goat & Hellbeard - 9/19

a distinct memory of mine from the first Hellbeard show i ever experienced out at the merchant's saloon in oakland is midway through the first song the reggae loving friend of mine i had been dragging to metal shows for the past couple months turned to me with a huge smile on his face and mouthed 'fuck yeah!' the slow sludgy, booming, percussion laden grooves and intense vocal nodule inducing vocals brought a heaviness that no one could not sway to. from then on we made it a point to check out Hellbeard any chance we had. a couple more east bay shows happened, and each one had me searching for a merch table so as to buy a recording, but they never seemed to have any. then for a while...Hellbeard just seemed to drop off. my hope was that there was recording happening, but i really had no idea.

so yeah, i was pretty fucking stoked when i walked by force of habit records (a badass shop by the way) and noticed a flyer announcing Hellbeard and Floating Goat playing together at the parkside, i stopped dead in my tracks. Floating Goat?! It'd been a while since i had seen Floating Goat. the epicness that was the Walken cd release show last november was uncanny. though not the firs time i had seen floating goat, the excitement of the night made it the most on point and hard rockin' performances i had ever seen the band put on...until last sunday night that is. Floating Goat layed into their groovy, old timey, chunky, doomy, sound with a gut wrenching intensity. despite the twenty five odd person sunday night audience, Floating Goat electrified thee parkside. persoanlly, i was really hoping to hear them play 'half alive', but they closed out with the groove-tastic 'heaven's burning', which was pretty fucking epic.

after Floating Goat, the wall of melodic sludge that is Hellbeard took the stage. totally living up to my memory based expectations, Hellbeard threw the fuck down. those funkily syncopated sloshy down-tuned legato licks left the audience swaying at pace with the waves of sound. much to my excitement the band was also selling cds and i was finally able to take home some Hellbeard for myself. all in all, an awesome fucking show, and some fun new music to block out the sounds of muni with...keep it gloomy y'all!