I showed up at Reggie’s at about 8:45 PM, thinking that as the show was billed at 9PM things would be starting in about 15 minutes. Alas, the music didn’t start until 10PM – I mean, it’s a Friday, so it’s not like a war crime or anything, but certainly a bit unusual for a four-band show. This gave me plenty of time to catch up with the folks I knew at the show and drain an oatmeal stout in a disturbingly short time period. Not my fault they’re delicious, y’know?

Pale Horseman

The show started off at 10 PM with Pale Horseman, longtime friends of mine and staples of the Chicago scene for even longer. As is customary, they’d brought their dual full-stack rigs with them – easily the largest setup of the night – trapping their poor drummer Jason between towering walls of Tolex.

Normally for these reviews I take notes during the set so that I can remember what I heard and what I want to write about, but I’ve seen Pale Horseman enough times I was able to skip that and really just take photos and enjoy the set.

Pale Horseman plays a form of skull-smashing sludge that draws heavily from industrial influences like Godflesh as well as classic sludge and doom like Neurosis and Bongripper. The riffs involved are huge and impactful, with song structures heavy on repetition and iteration so as to fully develop the potential of a riff. Opposed to similar acts like Conan that conjure images of cavemen bashing in skulls, to me Pale Horseman has always evoked thoughts of what it would be like to be a peasant in medieval Europe getting chased down by a knight and run through.

At center stage, bassist Rich Cygan is always in motion, fingers twisting across the fretboard – honestly it seems like he’s in a trance sometimes, with notes flowing from his mind directly to the bass. I imagine he’s also literally feeling the backbeat coming from behind him via drummer Jason Schryver, who keeps things interesting with a variety of tasty fills and huge, crashing cymbal-driven beats. I’m not quite sure what’s on Jason’s arm there, but I’m gonna guess it’s a heart rate monitor and not like, an arm-mounted lightshow.

Flanking the rhythm section, we have guitarists Andre Almarez, stage right, and Eric Ondo, stage left. Both of them stand behind their full-stacks, long hair occasionally obscuring their faces, bellowing into the microphones, and deliver the brutality that Pale Horseman is known for.

Both guitarists mostly focus on rhythm, but there’s variance between what they each play – this stacks up into some exceptionally sludge-tastic texture. There’s not a lot of “true” lead parts here (though when there are, they fuckin’ rip) – Pale Horseman’s sound is more about summoning the apocalypse through sinister riffs, and you’re not going to find the apocalypse up on the 15th fret too often.

All together, the band puts forward a vicious live sound that’s extremely faithful to their latest record, “The Fourth Seal”. If you’ve seen them live and don’t have the album, or vice versa, rectify this situation. And make sure to say hi to them if you can – they’re some of the friendliest guys you’re gonna find around here.

Long Live the Goat

I thought for sure that getting Pale Horseman’s rigs off stage would cause some delays, since Reggie’s Music Joint isn’t exactly overflowing with places to stage gear, but those guys are pros at it by now and things were in their right places in record time. One strange thing about this show is that all the bands brought their own drums – this is unusual to me as I’ve always used the house set there, which is pretty good too. Anyway, it all worked out fine and Long Live the Goat was up on stage and ready to rock on time.

I’ve already covered Long Live the Goat previously, so I’m going to go a little bit off of my usual coverage strategy here, but let’s start with the basics – Long Live the Goat plays a brand of stoner rock that’s heavily rooted in 70s proto-metal, and they do so with awesome musicianship and a slightly unconventional approach. You should check these guys out.

My other big takeaway here is that the sound at Reggie’s really works better for this kind of sound than the Burlington – I got a lot better idea of what was going on in the low-end, even when I was right up against the stage and not in range of the PA sound.

In my first recap, I hypothesized that guitarist/bassist Brett was switching between guitar and bass, but actually there’s a pickup wired at a specific spot and angle that only picks up the top two strings of the guitar, which goes out to the bass amp through a second input jack he’s added in. I’ve seen a fair amount of weird guitar setups, but never something like this – pretty cool! After the show I inquired about this – seems that this setup allows them, as a three-piece, to bring in rhythm guitar and still keep bass in the mix. Pretty ingenious, and it’s integrated seamlessly with their sound – it takes careful songwriting to use this setup right and that for sure has been accomplished here.

Over on the kit, drummer Al is still channeling some high quality talent into the skins, with lots and lots of tasty ghost notes that I could hear pretty well this time (thanks, Reggie’s sound system) plus just an excellent amount of variety all around. Still a big fan here!

Dedicated guitarist Jack, bathed in the strange yellow light that the stage left side of Reggie’s generally provides, continued his six-string excellence at this gig as well. His lil’ Marshall combo puts out deliciously cream lead tones that you really can’t get enough of.

Note: The photos for LLTG might look a bit different than the rest of the photos – I was chatting with another photographer at the show and it turned out he had a spare lens for my camera’s format – this lens is an auto-focusing 24mm f/1.8 that let me get some wider shots. I gave it back after LLTG, afraid that I’d walk off with it like a doofus later on.



Rebreather

Rebreather is a band I first heard of long ago, on a small message board on a site called “StonerRock.com”. Actually, I ran into another member of the board at this show, who likely was also drawn by the call of Rebreather. Small world!

This was all before memes existed (so, 2008 or so), but essentially it was a bit of a meme (at the time, it would have just been an in-joke) that you had to like Rebreather. I joined the board a bit too late to fully appreciate it, but as it turns out, indeed you should like Rebreather.

Formed in 1999 and hailing from Ohio, Rebreather are true disciples of the riff – but these are not fretboard-crossing, widdly-widdly riffs – these are disgustingly heavy riffs, shaped and defined by the absolutely ear-eviscerating guitar tone that produces them. They seem deceptively simple at first, but it soon becomes clear that anything more complicated would not be suitable for the human nervous system.

Guitarist Barley Rantilla spent a lot of the set rotated away from the crowd – he mostly operated on his own axis, rocking bath and forth, seemingly carried away by the frequencies his rig created. Mostly focusing on creating crunchy, thick riffs, he’d also get on the mic from time to time to deliver vocals that sounded like they were run through distortion and then maybe an EQ gate – the end result being completely incomprehensible and kinda terrifying.

Steve Wishnewski, bassist, underscored things with a swamp-drenched tone of his own, locked in with the drums to make sure we all felt the rhythm and didn’t just hear it.

Drummer Steve Gardner had the coolest looking kit of the night, in a red sparkle finish, and a kick drum large enough to hide a body in (and with the riffs Rebreather creates, that might be necessary one day).

The kit itself was pretty minimal, with just the bare minimum required to create riff-matching backbeats – but every piece of his set is sturdy and positioned perfectly so that Steve can deliver massive, pounding hits on demand. There’s really not a lot of fills going on here, with most of the playing there just to match the riffs and deliver a groove.

I think this sort of refined, carefully-honed simplicity is exactly what’s called for – especially in a live environment. It would be hard to not sink into a riff-worshipping trance watching Rebreather put on their fine-tuned set – the custom light show they bring along with them just adds to the immersion. The set wrapped up with both Barley and Bass Steve (as opposed to “Drum Steve”) generating a healthy dose of feedback by offering up their instruments to their cabs – a fitting way to close out a reverential set of amplifier worship.

Horehound

Horehound was the one band on this show that I didn’t know at all and wasn’t sure what to expect. Sometimes I’ll listen to acts I don’t know on the way to a show, but recently I’ve preferred to go in completely blind. Based on the name and Rebreather pairing I was expecting maybe like an ambient drone sort of thing, but actually, Horehound is high-energy stoner rock with unusually technical drumming and a myriad of dynamics, both vocally and instrumentally. So, I was completely wrong, but sometimes it’s fun to be wrong.

Vocalist Shy Kennedy was the only dedicated vocalist across all the bands at this show – I’ve always been a fan of standalong singers as I think it allows for more audience interaction and off-time vocals, but I have a newfound appreciation after starting to take photos because they tend to offer lots of cool shot opportunities. Shy combines a couple different vocal styles to great effect – most of the time she uses a powerful almost-crooning style that works great in front of the burly riffs and rhythm from the rest of the band, but also at points provides soft, ethereal backing to everything else going on. There’s even some screams in there, but as a rare standout rather than a key element.

Bassist Nick Kopco looked generally pretty happy all night, also noticing me at one point – unfortunately the focus on this shot isn’t great but I like it anyway – cheers, sir.

Horehound’s sound had a LOT of bass in it, with the bass really forming the thick core of the charging, pummeling riffs they put out – and when things got quieter Nick’s tone, nice and warm, was ever-present and ever-appealing.

Brendan Parrish, on guitar, has a guitar tone that almost seemed airy to me – sort of like what I’d expect to hear from a Marshall stack in a cathedral, if that helps at all. There’s a bit of mystery there, and combined with the thick bass tone it sounds great together.

Probably the standout element of Horehound’s sound to me was JD Dauer’s drumming – on top of just being generally excellent, JD put in some unconvential rhythms and playing structures that I wouldn’t normally expect – things like ending a measure with a quick succession of cymbal hits or cleverly inserted snare doubles. His kit also featured a tom drum on his left in addition to the usual rack & floor toms to help create powerful, quick fills – not something you see every day, but used to great effect here. To be clear, this requires the rest of the band being skilled enough to write songs that let his playstyle shine and not get buried – I truly was impressed here.

Horehound ended their set and then kicked off one more song after approval from the all-powerful Sound Guy, but I have to admit I made my way out before it ended – at this point it was about 1:15 AM and I had me a big ol’ tired.

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Thanks for reading! As always, big thanks to all the bands that played that night – readers, make sure to follow these folks so you can catch their future shows!

Horehound

rebreather

Long Live The GOAT

Pale Horseman