Desert Fest 2015 – The Uk’s Ultimate Stoner Rock, Doom, Phsyc & Sludge festival
SLEEP
So let’s dispense with “stoner” and “doom” and while “metal” is a good catch-all even that does what SLEEP does an injustice. What SLEEP does and has been doing since
1990. Since San Jose. Since vocalist and bassist Al Cisneros hinted darkly at his next act after Asbestosdeath. Make something that was like something you had never heard/felt
before even if you had heard/felt it before. Like wind or the yawning subsonic expanse of
an earthquake: something undeniably large.
While there may have been a few like them before them, there were none like them really
and certainly none of after them. And so in 2009 when they were reborn with Cisneros
who’d been reframing the world with the band OM, Matt Pike doing double duty with
this and his HIGH ON FIRE, and the estimable Jason Roeder doing the same with
NEUROSIS, SLEEP did what it had done and what it had left to do. Largely and without
pause, make music in tune with The Ages.
Best to be enjoyed? Live and living. See, hear, feel, do it. Well, beyond just music and
well into the experiential joy of pure being. SLEEP. Undoubtedly.
RED FANG
Artist Biography by Gregory Heaney
Based out of Portland, Oregon, Red Fang captures the loud and fast, anything-goes spirit of classic rock with their heavy stoner-influenced jams. The quartet, consisting of Bryan Giles, Aaron Beam, David Sullivan, and John Sherman, make guitars the focus of their gimmick-free brand of driving rock & roll, eschewing any prog leanings and putting the emphasis on the riffs.
The sound is tied together by a sense of punk urgency which spurs the stoner jams into action and gets the songs moving at a raucous gallop. The band made their debut in 2009 with a self-titled album released by Sargent House. For their follow-up, they struck up an unlikely partnership, heading into the studio with producer and multi-instrumentalist for the Decemberists, Chris Funk. The move would pay off for the band, who would release their second album, Murder the Mountains, on Relapse in 2011. The band revisited the partnership again for their third album, Whales and Leeches, which arrived in the fall of 2013.
BLACK PYRAMID
Black Pyramid play doom with the rumbling down-tuned tones of stoner metal gods like Sleep, Electric Wizard, and High On Fire, but with the epic arrangements of old school metal and doom acts such as Black Sabbath, Pentagram, and The Obsessed.
Add to the sonic brew perfectly executed forays into vintage psych and progressive rock, along with the apocalyptic lyrical ravings about war, the occult, and general alienation, and you’ve got an accurate picture of what the band is all about.
SnapDragon Magazine 