Kyuss Lives! + The Sword + Monstro @ L'Olympia

First thing's first: This was Kyuss. Forget what was printed on the ticket or put up on the marquee – Kyuss Lives!? Nope, Kyuss, plain and simple.

In case you don't know the situation, here's a quick briefing: Kyuss is one of the greatest bands ever. They broke up in the mid-90's and they're currently doing a reunion tour under the name Kyuss Lives!. It's being called Kyuss Lives! because original guitarist Josh Homme (of Queens of The Stone Age fame) isn't taking part – he's being replaced by some random dude.

Now, bands lose and replace members all the time – a ridiculous amount of the time, in fact. This rarely affects the band's name. Exception that proves the rule: Remember when Black Sabbath started calling themselves Heaven & Hell? Yeah.... it was super-lame.

So anyway, guitar tones are easily replicated. As long as John Garcia was on vocals this was going to be Kyuss to me.

Sidenote: You know what was better than the time I saw Iron Maiden? The time I saw Paul Di'Anno playing Iron Maiden songs with a local Maiden cover band. Just saying.

Anyways, on the show!

Monstro opened the night. They were kind of whatever... The sound was pretty bad (very echo-y and cavernous), they had no stage presence, and it took about 20 minutes before they got to some riffs that I liked. I'll give them a chance in another setting, but they completely failed to win me over this time.

The Sword had pretty much the same sound issues as Monstro, but they had some awesome songs to pull themselves through (“Night City”, “Tres Brujas”, anything from the first album...). It wasn't the best The Sword could be, but it was still pretty good.

Kyuss are among the bands that I have been listening to the longest, but that I have yet to see live (and for the record, even though it's never going to happen, I'd totally support a Dimebag-less Pantera reunion). So this show was totally a dream come true. Seriously, it was pure bliss. I'm not exaggerating (much) when I say that it was a religious experience. Every song was amazing and, luckily, the sound was great. The band was spot on and the crowd loved every minute If it. There was no bullshit, stage banter was kept to an absolute minimum, and the band just played stoner rock perfection for 2 hours straight. Really, what else needs to be said?

-Johnny Suck hosts Turn Down the Suck on Wednesdays from 9-11pm