It’s no secret Yeak Inc. likes music, live music in particular. So when a conversation about what happened to that great thrash metal of the 80’s came up at at the Yeak Inc. World Headquarters, we looked around to see what was playing.
We aren’t talking about the Hair Metal bands, we mean music like Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, etc… Those bands are still around and pretty much doing the same thing, but has anyone followed? We just aren’t sure, but we wanted to look around and find out.
Metal Assault is a LA-based metal website. They also put together bands into local concerts that bring together up and coming metal bands. Sure enough, a concert came up right away at the Viper Room when we checked it.
The Viper Room is one of those places we had always wanted to check out but never got around to. Other than Johnny Depp being a partial owner, at least at one point, and River Phoenix dying in front of it, we didn’t know much about it. It’s located in Hollywood on Sunset, pretty close to The Roxy and Whiskey-a-go-go. A mostly nondescript building painted black inside and out, you wouldn’t see it unless you were looking for it.
Parking was easy and not too expensive. After we paid our $10(!) to get in, we wandered through this little maze to get up to the venue. It’s tiny! With the stage at one corner, a full bar on the back wall, and stuffed booths on the side, what’s left for the floor isn’t that big. And that’s a good thing in this case. We aren’t a big fan of the big venues, but we’ll go occasionally, depending on who is there.
It wasn’t too crowded and people only started coming in as bands came on. I got the impression there was a lot of friends and family for each one, but a few people stayed around the whole time. It never got too crowded but there were plenty of people. And about the crowd; we’re usually on the older side bands we go see lately, but not this time. Great range and diversity and everyone was pretty cool about not just getting in each other’s way.
The first band up was Fallen Suns with more of a grunge sound. If you like Soundgarden, this is the band for you. They sounded great and made no apologies for the similarities, dedicating one song to recently deceased Chris Cornell. There was a little Pantera in the sound as well, and they played well and were fun to watch.
After that followed Edge of Paradise. Yes, they are exactly what you would guess, a Goth Metal band fronted by a darkly slender woman with a fantastic set of lungs. By lungs, we mean she could sing! What we could hear was amazing but the sound mixing was so bad during their set, it ended up sounding muddy and lost. The whole band was great musically but was just tough to hear.
Socionic didn’t really work for us and, even now, can’t really figure out what they were. They played well enough but didn’t make any impression. In fact, we were a little annoyed with how they sounded and left at that point. The last band, Aeonic Impulse, is more prog metal, and we weren’t willing to stand through an hour long song. Prog metal isn’t really our thing.
It was a fun concert overall and we would totally go back to the Viper Room for pretty much anything. Why we hadn’t been there before, we don’t know, but we’ll be back and we recommend anyone looking for a chill place for concerts to check it out. We also found two bands, Fallen Suns and Edge of Paradise, we are going to keep an eye on. They were worth the going to see individually, and getting our metal on is always good \m/.
We are always looking for ideas! Want us to check something out? Let us know! Have any suggestions for blog posts, or comments in general, we want to hear it. Drop us a note in the comments or email us at info@yeakinc.com.