Psycho 2021 music festival review

We’d originally planned to start the final day of the 2021 Psycho Music Festival in Las Vegas at noon to see Warish, but they cancelled their performance before the festival started. So, we had nothing to do but lounge at the pool and spa after breakfast until we headed to the House of Blues venue to see Frankie and the Witch Fingers for the first time. I’d been keen on seeing them, as their last album is outstanding, and clips I’ve seen of their shows looked wild.

They didn’t disappoint. They practically flattened the House of Blues in “their first show in about two thousand years.” A lot of people in the crowd seemed to not know who they were, but were ardent fans by the end. Later in the day, I overheard a guy talking about them to friends: “Frankie and the Witch Fingers! I walked in not knowing what to expect! Holy shit!” He was right. They put on one of the best sets of the entire weekend.

Franke and the Witch Fingers casting Audible Glammer.

We had time for lunch and then headed to the beach stage to see Dengue Fever – a band we’d both wanted to see for a while. They play a neat version of Cambodian funk and disco and had a lot of the crowd dancing in the sand and the wave pool. Their saxophonist is top-notch as well.

We headed back inside to catch to the Rock & Rhythm Lounge, where Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears got on stage to bring some funky soul. Lewis is a sharp guitar player, and the crowd quickly picked up on what he was putting down.

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears piling on even more funk.

My wife was exhausted by this point, so she went back to the hotel room while I returned to the beach to see Osees pound out one of the loudest sets I’ve seen them play. Part of the volume could’ve been from their usual power bouncing off the water of the beach and up at everyone standing on the beach, and part of it could be from them playing in front of a live audience again after so long. It was a wild set, with people in the pool kicking and splashing water everywhere and the security guards being somewhat dumbfounded by what was happening. Drummer Paul Quattrone was especially on-point during the whole set.

Osees bowling us over with the power of rock.

I also managed to catch some partial sets from Howling Giant, Sasquatch, Mothership, and Black Sabbitch during the festival – all of whom had large, happy crowds in front of them.

The entire festival had a happy vibe to it. Everyone was happy to be seeing live music again and partying with friends again.

Plus, it was nice to lounge at an outdoor pool for a while.

Tickets for the 2022 festival are already on sa le, and they’ve announced some of the bands already confirmed, including metal giants like Mercyful Fate, Emperor, and Boris, as well as prog-metal heavyweights Year of No Light.

Keep your mind open.

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I wasn’t sure what to expect at the 2021 Psycho Las Vegas music festival. I’d bought tickets to the 2020 festival, but that was, like everything else, cancelled due to the pandemic. I kept the tickets in hopes that most, if not all, of the bands would return. Most did, but there were some absences that were bummers (Windhand, Mephistofeles, and Boris in particular). There were also additions that were quite welcome (Osees, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Thievery Corporation).

I also had no idea what to expect in terms of healthy safety measures and how I, my wife, and people in general were going to react to be at a music festival again, or even in a casino and among large groups of people again. Nonetheless, we took our vaccinated bodies to Sin City and were happy to discover that the airplane, airport, and all businesses in Nevada are under a mask mandate.

My guess is that 70% of festival crowd was masked nearly all the time. The only person I heard complaining about it was Glenn Danzig (more on that later). The biggest health hazard complaint I had was due to the stunning amount of smokers. I’ve been gone from festivals for so long that I’d forgotten how many people smoke at them, let alone in casinos. Plus, marijuana is legal in Nevada, so the stank of the sticky-icky was everywhere. It’s illegal to smoke it in public, but the odds of you getting cited for it are slim to none.

The festival opened on Thursday, August 19th, with the “Psycho Swim” kick-off party. The festival is held at the Mandalay Bay Casino Hotel, and the “Psycho Swim” is at their Daylight Beach Club – where the security didn’t allow you to bring in a wallet chain or even gum. The pool was full of metal fans, psych-weirdos, music nerds, and, yes, some sexy people.

Everyone is sinking in this pool because the festival was so metal-heavy.

No, we didn’t get into the pool. It was too crowded by the time we got there, and we were mainly there to see bands for the first time in almost two years. The first was Here Lies Man, who opened the entire festival with their groovy, Afro-doom riffs.

For the record, I was the only one in the crowd with a Here Lies Man shirt (which I picked up from them at the last Levitation Music Festival in Austin). I got to thank many of the HLM members after the show, and J.P., the bassist, was kind enough to give me his set list.

It was their first show in two years. This would be a repeated theme from nearly every band we saw over the weekend. All of them were excited to be playing a live show in front of a crowd again.

Up next were Blackwater Holylight, who started off their set by saying, “Okay, we’re going to play some depressing songs for you.” Their doom-psych was appreciated by the crowd, and their upcoming album should be pretty good – judging from the songs they played from it.

Blackwater Holylight were perhaps the only band all weekend who appropriately dressed for the desert heat.

We left for a little while to enjoy some air conditioning and lunch at an Irish pub in the shopping center that connects Mandalay Bay and the Luxor (where we stayed for about half the price of a room at Mandalay Bay). I recommend the turkey burger. We returned in time for Death Valley Girls‘ set, which was the best of the night. They played a wild set of mystical psychedelia. Lead singer Bonnie Bloomgarden, seeming to draw power from the moon, wore a red dress that made her look like a ghost from a Dario Argento movie and a belt that looked like she won it in a professional wrestling match with a cyborg from the year 2305 (and, for all I know, she did). There were a few times when I wasn’t sure if she was wiping sweat from her face or tears from being so happy that they were performing their “first show in about three hundred years,” as she put it. Guitarist Larry Schemel was on fire as well, unleashing some heavy riffs throughout the set. I chatted with him afterwards for a moment, and thanked him for coming out to the festival. He thanked me and said, “This feels weird. It’s our first show after so long…It’s bizarre.” He also gave me his set list, which was a surprise gift.

“Look at the moon!” – Bonnie Bloomgarden (in red dress) points out her cosmic guide for the evening.

It was a good start to the weekend. We had good music, good food, everyone was being cool about each other’s health (the resorts had plenty of hand sanitizer stations and free masks), and we had plenty of time to sleep in the next day.

Up next, dirty metal, psych-rock, stoner metal, electro-goth, shoe gaze, and…bossa nova?

Keep your mind open.

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Tag: Psycho 2021 music festival review

Psycho Las Vegas 2021 recap: Day Four

Psycho Las Vegas 2021 recap: Day One