You gotta love Monday nights. Ok you may not love Mondays, or Monday nights, but you gotta love Monday nights at the Troubadour! What more could you ask to pick-up your dreary Monday blues than a free show at the Troubadour! Top it off with a helping of awesome bands and you’re set!
Hey buddy, come here… I got a secret for ya. What is it you ask? Carcinogen opening the show! From the start Jeremy Penick (Guitars, Vocals) Ryan Burchfield (Bass), Dan Noonan (Guitars) and Collin Torres (Drums) took hold of the audience and forgot to let go! (I think that’s how I got the bruises on my arms) Their second song of the night, ‘Faithless‘ was awesome, even moreso with Chris from Strain 999 giving a helping hand and singing on the song. The intensity of this band is so strong, you can see it on the looks on their faces. Incredible.
The next band to take the stage was Shuvel, from Chino Hills. To me, this band sounded a lot like Limp Bizkit with two vocalists, the only difference is, I like Shuvel a lot better. Isaac Ayala and Jeff Hollinger (both on vocals) compliment each other very well. Shuvel’s guitarist, Ryan Stuber, adds a lot of the psychedelic groove that Shuvel has in their songs. “It’s really quite breathtaking” – to quote Dr. Evil. Both Carlos Sandoval (bass) and Kyle Hollinger (drums) help make out the Shuvel sound. I won’t be missing this band when they playing around the LA area.
Next on the bill was Prizefighter, with a new guitarist. Prizefighter opened up with ‘To The West‘ followed by ‘Everlasting Sun‘, ‘Romance‘, ‘Nothing‘ and ‘Believe It‘. The final two songs that Prizefighter enlightened us with were new additions to their inventory, ‘No Love‘ and ‘Control‘; Yes Prizefighter has played ‘Control‘ before, but it’s still relatively new, so bite me. Chris Hale (Vocals), Jason Burns (Bass) and Hugo Chavez (Drums), along with their new guitarist will easily be one of the dominant forces in the LA Scene.
Two Hit Creeper took the stage with a kick to your head! If you haven’t seen Two Hit Creeper before, you better get your ass out to one of their shows now! Michael (Vocals, Accordions, Drums and Sequence Programming) and James (7-String Guitar) put on one hell of a show. Two Hit Creeper’s style of music has been described as “Evil Circus Music” for good reasons. It’s very dark, eerie and very cool at the same time. Any song that Michael uses his accordion on is a killer one; ‘Shoe Size‘ for example.
Droid was the last band of the evening, playing two of my favorite Droid tunes, ‘The Number Six‘ and ‘Perplexing‘. Yes, Droid did play more than two songs, I just don’t remember the names of them. But you can rest easy, every one of Droid’s songs kick ass! Filthy (Vocals), Bruce (Guitar), Jamie (Guitar), Alan (Bass) and Steve (Drums) make up the Droid unit and these boys played with the smoothness of a well oiled machine.
If you couldn’t tell, I really liked this show. All the bands were kick ass.
