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Earsplitting, mind-blowing moments in Psycho Vegas’ first day

Updated August 19, 2017 - 8:39 pm

Some takeaways from Day One of Psycho Vegas 2017 at the Hard Rock Hotel. The heavy music fest continues through Sunday. Bring earplugs.

What a difference a year makes

At 2 p.m. Friday, The Joint was already a human dam burst of dark T-shirts and much brighter moods, as the eager crowd was as bubbly as the carbonation in their Bud Lights in anticipation of Northwestern black metallers Wolves in the Throne Room’s majestic ferocity. We don’t have official attendance numbers yet, but the draw seemed twice as large as in Psycho’s debut year, with arguably the largest crowd yet packing The Joint for Sleep’s Richter scale-activating set. The production values also seemed to be taken up a notch, with an enhanced light show that, combined with the intense volume levels, at times created an immersive experience, like being saddled with a cinder block and plunged into an ocean of sound and illumination.

The night owls came home to roost

By the end of the night, The Joint’s lineup was running an hour and a half late, a delay that began with Sleep taking its time to get going, presumably to ensure that the bong clutched by the costumed astronaut that joined them onstage was in proper working order. This meant that headliners Brian Jonestown Massacre didn’t start until 1:30 a.m, right when they were originally scheduled to conclude. Ah well, said lag allowed plenty of attendees to pack the Hard Rock pool stage to see Chicago post-metallers Pelican craft simultaneously gorgeous, involved, dense and punishing swells of sound beneath swaying palm trees.

BJM betrayed no sleepiness, despite starting its performance in early morning hours normally known for infomercials hawking dubious cutlery. “Thanks for staying up late,” frontman Anton Newcombe said as the band began, huddling tightly onstage, its chemistry tighter still. The seven-piece then marshaled wave upon wave of reverb, as alternately trilling and purring organ and insistently banged tambourine created a deep, deep dive into ’60s psychedelia that halted only long enough for Newcombe to occasionally switch vintage guitars. “Keep dreamin’,” he sang during “Geezers,” “till it’s time we say to go.” That moment came right around the time the RJ hit your driveway Saturday morning.

And the toughest conflict of the evening was …

Hmmm, French prog with operatic, intertwined vocals giving voice to a self-invented language, a Southern hard rock quartet with a possessed-by-the-spirit-of-Janis-Joplin frontwoman or punk-informed black metallers with a fondness for lubricating stages with pig’s blood?

Decisions, decisions.

This intense conundrum, right up there with having to decide whether or not to buy groceries for children or blow your paycheck at the fest’s mammoth merch area, confronted Psycho-goers around 8 p.m. That was when Magma, Royal Thunder and Young in the Way played at the same time on different stages.

We went for Magma, which delivered a truly inimitable performance — a thing of childlike wonder and adult confusion that managed to be blissful, challenging, exhilarating and confounding all at once. The band’s performance was a series of musical WTF?-moments, spanning lunatic-fringe jazz, touches of polka and extraterrestrial prog that sounded like hymnals to the alien god of thunder. It crested in perhaps the evening’s most seismic moment, when the band ended its set in an explosive frenzy of sound — the musical equivalent of an atom being cleaved in half.

Luckily, we also managed to catch Royal Thunder’s final number, with powerhouse singer Miny Parsons turning in maybe the night’s most commanding, knock-you-on-your-heels vocal performances, as she brought home “Whispering World” with a roar, song title be damned.

Five Friday highlights

5. Seeing former Kyuss frontman John Garcia’s short-lived desert blues combo Slo Burn for the first time in 20 years.

4. The surging tsunami of sound that was the conclusion of Chelsea Wolfe’s alternately biting and beatific performance.

3. The Melvins’ fierce, timely reading of Flipper’s “Sacrifice.”

2. Sleep’s “Dragonaut,” an earthquake test in song form powered by a Mount Rushmore riff.

1. Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke’s flammable, full-contact funk.

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.

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