All-star LA heavy rock quartet All Souls visits Bay Area
Los Angeles-based heavy rock outfit All Souls returns to the Bay Area to play shows in Petaluma, Albany and San Francisco this weekend.
Founded in 2015, All Souls is made up of three veteran players who have had long established careers in music. Onetime Bay Area residents Tony Aguilar (guitar/vocals) and Meg Castellanos (bass/vocals) started their band Totimoshi in the late '90s and spent well over a decade of bashing out sludgy, Melvins-inspired heaviness over the course of six acclaimed albums on labels including Crucial Blast and Volcom. The band worked with Helmet founder Page Hamilton (who produced two of their albums) and their recordings featured such heavy rock and metal luminaries as Melvins drummer Dale Crover, Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds and Neurosis principle Scott Kelly.
The couple eventually relocated the band to Los Angeles, where they would connect with the other members of All Souls. Drummer Tony Tornay is best known for his work with pioneering desert rock band Fatso Jetson, but has also worked on an array of loosely associated projects including former Kyuss/Queens of the Stone Age leader Josh Homme's Desert Sessions recordings and prolific musician Brant Bjork (Kyuss, Fu Manchu and numerous other bands). Now departed second guitarist Erik Trammell first came to notoriety as a member of Portland, OR-based noise-punk band Black Elk during the mid-2000s.
The band began writing songs together and refined a sound that touched on the members' shared sludge/noise roots while introducing expansive desert-rock sonic vistas and melodic elements that recalled the more tuneful late '80s recordings of The Pixies as well as contemporaries Queens of the Stone Age. The hard-working group built a reputation as a powerhouse live act, putting in substantial time on the road with like-minded heavy acts like Red Fang, The Sword, Torche and Kvelertak.
Recording with longtime engineer Toshi Kasai, the band issued its eponymous debut in 2018 on Sunyata Records (the label owned by Screaming Trees and Mad Season member Barrett Martin) to wide acclaim. The band's reputation has only grown since the release of the album thanks to stints opening for the Jesus Lizard on several West Coast dates late that year and touring arenas supporting Tool, whose drummer Danny Carey played tablas on the song "Sadist/Servant."
While the pandemic would force the band off the road, they put the downtime to good use. The quartet continued to write and refine new tunes, eventually putting out their appropriately entitled second album Songs For the End of the World in the fall of 2020, once again tracking the sessions with Kasai behind the boards. The group went through a major change after the release when Tramell announced he would be stepping away from the band, with Behold! The Monolith guitarist Matt Price filling the void for a time.
With the lockdown continuing to curtail touring activity, the band teamed up with Fatso Jetson in June last year for "Virtual Volume," which featured both groups performing live at Total Annihilation Studios that fans could pay to stream at home. The bands' sets were also recorded and released this past summer as a split live album on Bay Area heavy rock imprint Ripple Music. The recording featured one new tune that would also be included on the band's latest studio effort, Ghosts Among Us.
Produced at Total Annihilation by renowned musician Alain Johannes (Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures) who also played and sang on the record to fill in for the now departed Price (the band is moving forward as a trio). Representing another level of sonic refinement, tunes like "Roam" and "Poison the Well" evoke a dark melancholy mood balanced by the album's more aggressive rockers "I Dream" and "The Grind."
All Souls took a brief break in the spring as Aguilar and Castellanos reunited Totimoshi to play the trio's first concert in a dozen years at noise-rock festival Caturwaul in Minneapolis, but have kept busy playing shows with the band returning to a quartet line-up with the addition of rhythm guitarist Alice Austin, who may be better known as the lead singer in popular LA tribute act Black Sabbitch. The group returns to the Bay Area for the first time since last November for a trio of shows. On Friday night, the band will play the Phoenix Theater with local thrash metal outfit Hatriot. Originally a project fronted by longtime Exodus lead singer Steve "Zetro" Souza featuring his sons Cody (bass) and Nick (drums), the younger generation has since taken control of the band with the elder Souza being occupied since rejoining Exodus with Cody stepping up to take over lead vocals. Filled out by founding lead guitarist Kosta Varvatakis and recently returning rhythm guitarist Miguel Esparza, the band performs songs from its latest album, last year's Vale of Shadows. Opening the show will be SF power trio Disastroid (more on that band below).
For All Souls' headlining Saturday night show at the Ivy Room in Albany, the group will be joined by San Francisco band High Winds, which features former member of the Fresh & Onlys Kyle Gibson on drums, bassist Gustavo Mendoza (Curl Up & Die) and singer/guitarist Jesse Robeck (ex-Hides) dealing out sounds that recall the classic noise-punk of early '90s Amphetamine Reptile bands like the Jesus Lizard, Cows and Unsane. Opening the show is another Bay Area all-star conglomerate, Desslok.
A pandemic project that includes former members of beloved SF band Zen Guerilla Rich Millman (also a member of psych favorites Carlton Melton) on guitar and keys and Carl Horne on bass and ex-Acid King drummer Joey Osborne (who has played with Altamont and Frisco), Desslok is fronted by Bob Hannam on vocals and synths. While a relative newcomer to performing outside of being a member of SF Ace Frehley tribute act Frehley's Vomet (he also co-directed the 2016 documentary "The Colossus of Destiny: A Melvins Tale"), last year Hannam sang a pair of Small Faces covers on the first release by Cabbages N' Mash, a band with Melvins drummer Crover on guitar, Toshi Kasai on keyboards and a rhythm section featuring Blondie drummer Clem Burke and original Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock.
Desslok delivers a dystopian post-punk sound that takes cues from classic Killing Joke and early Gary Numan/Tubeway Army with nods to pioneering space-rockers Hawkwind. The quartet has played a number of San Francisco shows and earlier this year tracked an album's worth of material at San Francisco's El Studio. While still looking for a label home to release their proper debut, the quartet just put out its first corrosive single "What's the Use?" backed with a cover of the Hawkwind nugget "Ejection" that is available now digitally and on seven-inch single.
On Sunday afternoon at the Bottom of the Hill in SF, Desslok and All Souls will play before a headlining set by Disastroid. Formed over a decade ago by singer/guitarist Enver Koneya and bassist Travis Williams, the band puts a unique twist on the typical stoner-rock formula by adding elements of early '90s AmRep/Touch and Go style noise rock and later instrumental post/math-rock to the mix.
The band issued a series of self-released albums and EPs starting in 2009, gradually building its local following as they refined their sound. More recently, Disastroid shared Bay Area stages with established touring acts like Fu Manchu, Mondo Generator, Helmet, Church Of Misery, Big Business, Fatso Jetson and Yawning Man as well as SF's own experimental punk mavericks Oxbow. In addition to appearing at the 2018 edition of the Psycho Las Vegas music festival, the band got signed to stoner/psych imprint Heavy Psych Sounds, which issued Disastroid's latest effort Mortal Fools in 2020.
Hatriot with All Souls and Disastroid
Friday, Aug. 11, 8 p.m. $12
The Phoenix Theater
All Souls with High Winds and Desslok
Saturday, Aug. 12, 8 p.m. $12-$15
The Ivy Room
Disastroid with All Souls and Desslok
Sunday, Aug. 13, 3 p.m. $12-$15
The Bottom of the Hill
