At first, the beautiful art deco Wiltern Theater may not have been the best fitting location for Kyuss’ hard stoner rock, but the band felt completely at home on Friday night, playing a very long set, over 2-hour long, following no less than 3 other bands, which made the whole concert last around 5 exhausting hours!
Some people may say that the band, which features John Garcia on vocals, Brant Bjork on drums, Nick Oliveri/Scott Reeder on bass and Bruno Fevery on guitar, will never be the same without Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, but, as they have slightly altered the name from Kyuss to Kyuss Lives! (with the exclamation point), the crowd around me could not care less, and they were not disappointed at all by the quartet's epic thunderous renditions of the songs, digging in Kyuss catalogue, with songs from their 1994 ‘Welcome to Sky Valley’, 1992 ‘Blues for the Red Sun’, 1995 ‘And the Circus Leaves Town’ albums, and some rarities.
They started the show with the relatively slow and dense ‘Gardenia’, a skull-crushing number which sometimes ventured into some wha-wha guitars over the deep dark sound, then launched a faster assault with ‘Hurricane’, during ‘Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop’ Brant Bjork’s violent throbbing drumbeats were interrupting themselves to only start again, more impetuously, and from this, every distortion resonated like a natural disaster, every song like a potential earth-destructive apocalypse.
They were four on stage, but switched from Nick Oliveri to Scott Reeder to again Nick Oliveri on bass all along the show, and invited some special friends for a song toward the end of the concert,… I thought they would never stop playing their heavy rock numbers, going into some long psychedelic grooves, but may be that’s Kyuss’ aim and purpose: to bathe you into these trippy, heavy and energetic sound that makes you lose the notion of time as if you were under the influence of some heavy psychotropic drug, endlessly driving a desolated highway. But the back of the stage, showing a giant hawk flying in a giant-sun-occupied sky, was reminding us where we were going: to the desert.
John Garcia with his hair tied back in a ponytail and his high-screamed vocals was center stage, but not always front stage, holding his mic with both hands, pushing it back, breathing hard, pushing his heavy metal croon quite high and easily finding its way through the thick wild flow of riffs. He was driven, but in a way not behaving on stage like a metal guy, showing unique moves, sexy and brutal at the same time.
A guy in his late 50s next to me was yelling the same song title, ‘Big Bikes‘, every five minutes, quite unsuccessfully as they never played it, and overall the very male crowd was clearly there to see Kyuss Lives!, wearing their best Thin Lizzy t-shirts, denim jackets, long hairs and facial tattoos, some even looking kind of scary, the music being more fist-raising than head-banging.
Garcia left the stage a few times, leaving place for more crescendo of distortion and more disoriented trance-like assaults, and when barefoot Scott Reeder came to replace Nick Oliveri for a few songs, things became even looser and more psychedelia was ravaging the soundscape. They closed the show with a wild and ferocious rendition of ‘Green Machine’, but at this point, I could not tell if it was really the last song, I had lost track of time,… anyway each song they played after Nick Oliveri went back on stage was a potential candidate for an explosive ending.
Setlist
With Nick Oliveri On Bass
1. Gardenia
2. Hurricane
3. One Inch Man
4. Thumb
5. Freedom Run
6. Asteroid
7. Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop
8. Conan Troutman
9. Odyssey
10. Whitewater
11. El Rodeo
12. 100 Degrees
With Scott Reeder On Bass
13. Fatso Forgotso
14. Demon Cleaner
15. Tangy Zizzle
16. N.O.
With Nick Oliveri On Bass
17. Spaceship Landing
18. Molten Universe
19. 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up)
20. Allen's Wrench
21. Green Machine