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Listings are
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next is the support band(s),
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Friday November 20
2026
7:30PM doors -- music at 8:30PM ••• 21 AND OVER $25 in advance / $30 at the door $30.81 in advance [25 face value +5.81 service fee] Earthless earthlessofficial.com Psychedelic rock, stoner metal Terry Gross instagram.com/terrygrossband experimental, jam, psychedelic Carlton Melton carltonmeltonmusic.com psychedelia, stoner metal, krautrock Sasquatch Borracho spinning the platters Earthless -from Northern CA -There’s an ancient Japanese legend in which a horde of demons, ghosts and other terrifying ghouls descend upon the sleeping villages once a year. Known as Hyakki Yagy?, or the “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons,” one version of the tale states that anyone who witnesses this otherworldly procession will die instantly—or be carried off by the creatures of the night. As a result, the villagers hide in their homes, lest they become victims of these supernatural invaders. Such is the inspiration for the latest album from Earthless. “My son is really into mythical creatures and old folk stories about monsters and ghosts,” bassist Mike Eginton explains. “We came across the ‘Night Parade of One Hundred Demons’ in a book of traditional Japanese ghost stories. I like the idea of people hiding and being able to hear the madness but not see it. It’s the fear of the unknown.” Whereas 2018’s Black Heaven featured shorter songs and vocals from guitarist Isaiah Mitchell on much of the album—an unprecedented move for the San Diego power trio—their latest is a return to the epic instrumentals Earthless made their unmistakable name on. Night Parade Of One Hundred Demons is comprised of two monster songs—the 41-minute, two-part title track and the 20-minute “Death To The Red Sun.” “Originally, we were trying to figure out how to condense the title track so it would fit onto one side of an LP,” drummer Mario Rubalcaba explains. “But the more we kept playing, the more we kept finding different places to go with it. We eventually just decided to let it breathe and go long.” The scenario that allowed for this kind of exploration was a stark contrast to that of Black Heaven. At that point, Mitchell was living in the Bay Area, which made it difficult for the band to get together and work on the type of long instrumental pieces they’re known for. But in March 2020, the guitarist moved back to San Diego. More specifically, he moved back the night the pandemic lockdown kicked in. Bad timing, perhaps—or maybe perfect timing. “With Isaiah here, we were able to get together once or twice a week to work on these jams,” Rubalcaba says. “We got back to our original songwriting process of just playing and building off each other little by little. And we actually had the time to do that, which was creatively inspiring.” Plus, they were all on the same page about not wanting to do another record with vocals. “In a way, I think this album was a reaction to our last record,” Eginton says. “Black Heaven was outside our comfort zone. I think it was a good record, but it was challenging to write songs in a more traditional verse-chorus-verse format. This one was more enjoyable. I’m sure we’ll do more vocal tracks in the future, but for the time being I see that album as a one-off.” Given the record’s inspiration, it should come as no surprise that Night Parade Of One Hundred Demons strikes a more sinister tone than the rest of the band’s catalogue. “It definitely has a darker, almost evil kind of vibe compared to stuff we’ve done in the past,” Rubalcaba says. “There’s more paranoia and noise, and some of Isaiah’s whammy-bar stuff kind of reminds me of these Jeff Hanneman moments in Reign In Blood, where it just seems like everything is going to hell. It’s pretty fun.” Night Parade Of One Hundred Demons was recorded in San Diego with Rubalcaba’s childhood friend Ben Moore, who’s worked with everyone from Diamanda Galas and Burt Bacharach to Ceremony and Hot Snakes. When Eginton wasn’t tracking his bass parts, he worked on the album’s incredible sleeve art. “He really dedicated himself to the project,” Rubalcaba says. “He’d be drawing in the studio with, like, a coal-miner’s lamp on his head while we were doing overdubs. He really knocked it out of the park.” “I basically wanted to draw my interpretation of the folk story,” Eginton explains. “I started researching the different Y?kai—the demons—and really got into it. It was really cool reading about where they came from and what their interactions with humans were. Then I tried to create what I imagined the event might look like. I didn’t get a hundred in there, but I got quite a few.” All told, Night Parade Of One Hundred Demons isn’t just a return to the band’s traditional format—it’s a return to their very beginnings. “This album actually has the very first Earthless riff in it,” Eginton reveals. “We just recorded it 20 years after we wrote it. But we’re really happy with how this record came out. We feel it might be our finest to date.” Mario Rubalcaba (drums) / Isaiah Mitchell (guitars) / Mike Eginton (bass) Terry Gross -from San Francisco, CA -Few bands are as primed to capture their ecstatic live energy in masterful sonic detail like Terry Gross. Composed of three renowned engineer/producers whose studio doubles as their jam spot and communal gathering place, the trio are able to document their longform psychedelic escapades with granular precision. The potency of the fellowship formed by drummer Phil Becker, bassist Donny Newenhouse, and guitarist Phil Manley (Trans Am) lies in their ability to utilize their prowess as both players and recording engineers to translate feeling with immaculate clarity. On their second full-length Huge Improvement, Terry Gross embody a complex web of emotion with songs as ferocious and precise as they are agile and care-free, delighting in the catharsis of excising tension alongside one’s most trusted peers. Huge Improvement’s tongue-in-cheek title is rightfully earned. Like their debut Soft Opening, the pieces on Huge Improvement began as improvised studio jam sessions without expectations. The trio’s ability to plug in, play and have each experiment thoroughly documented opens up unparalleled avenues for further exploration and honing. The bulk of the songs were constructed from their now tried-and-trusted process of excerpting the best sections of their lengthy jams and sculpting them into more refined shapes. “Sheepskin City”, a gallivanting ode to impermanence, runs at full-tilt, pushing repetitive riffing to sonic extremes and invoking prog-rock drum and guitar heroics. Terry Gross’s vocal melodies shine with tight harmonies that borrow from Manley and Newenhouse’s time playing in bluegrass bands. “Sales Pitch” implodes from a motorik groove into a sludgy dirge rich with textural nuance hidden in the crunch. The languid “Full Disclosure” is a testament to Terry Gross’s craftsmanship and undeniable chemistry as both a live and studio band, chronicling one of the trio’s jams in its entirety without edits or overdubs. Closing track “Effective Control” draws out an astoundingly pop-inflected edge to their rollicking thunder as it nears closer to the album’s exhilarating conclusion. A throughline of absurdity runs through the themes of Huge Improvement, from the band’s larger-than-life compositions to the facetious titles to the songs’ approach to space rock tropes. The pieces explore bleak futureworld concepts like “annoying sales robots, nanotechnology and massive generational spaceships collapsing,” with irreverence, but refrain from outright pessimism or detachment. The now-defunct titular San Francisco business Sheepskin City which features on the album’s cover acts as a totem for the band’s embrace of humor and genuine concern for preservation in tandem. “Sheepskin City was always a perplexing oddball place on a busy corner in San Francisco’s Mission district,” notes Becker. “They hung the same weathered ragged sheepskins out front daily. Was it a front for something else? Something about it just made you smile when you drove by it. If Sheepskin City is still there, things are alright. And then one day after decades of being there, it’s gone! Things are still alright, but they’re different.” Newenhouse adds: “For us it became sort of an analog for the future and how technological advancements will most likely result in some sort of ultimate letdown.” Manley continues: “These are places in the neighborhood where we have our recording studio, El Studio, which is where we write, rehearse and record. It’s our home base. I feel like we were trying to capture a moment in time. Everything is temporary.” The four mammoth slabs that make up Huge Improvement are driving, unrelenting excursions into the unknown. Whether burning white-hot or smoldering in plumes of smoke, the pieces stretch as much inwardly as they do cosmically, embracing every surprising turn. Terry Gross’s Huge Improvement morphs the trio’s search for communal connection and reprieve into a transcendent respite, a burst of focused energy to be enveloped in while facing the senselessness around us with a smile. Terry Gross is Phil Manley - Guitar & Vocals Donny Newenhouse - Bass & Vocals Phil Becker - Drums Carlton Melton -from Northern CA -Northern California psychedelic sorcerers Carlton Melton are brain surfers, mind trippers, ... “psychlists,” if you prefer. The band will take your head for a ride, occasionally rushing at superluminal speeds through a wormhole or gliding softly on a gentle breeze in a leafy glade. Sometimes your brain needs to rage, and sometimes it needs to repose. For a decade and a half, the band has yo-yo’ed, almost schizophrenically, between these two modes: walloping space jams with furious guitar solos in one hemisphere of the brain and ethereal, feather-light splashdowns in the other. Not to mention a track here and there that builds from the latter into the former. But with two new releases in 2023, the band has evolved. Whether psych rock or ambient trance, their sound remains driving, organic, and flowing. With the addition of Anthony Taibi (White Manna, DDT), however, the group’s metal freak-outs are Hawkwindier and their droning kraut trances are Spacemen 3-er. In January, the quartet released the playfully spacey Resemble Ensemble, recorded in Taibi’s home studio 3D Light. October now sees the band Turn To Earth, a work with scents of Autumn, a season of death and transition. The cover art evokes a vine- covered, electric crucifix. The sound is, well, earthy but also gritty and striving towards change. The album was recorded in Fall 2022 and now harvested in Fall 2023. Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco. With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal. As exquisite as Turn To Earth is, Melton are best appreciated as a live act: their recordings as well as their gigs are largely improvised – not so much composed as birthed. And yet their most recent tour ended abruptly and perilously. The group had to cancel its final three shows once members were admitted to Arnhem hospital in the Netherlands. Five years later, reinforcements have strengthened the band and restocked its arsenal of great tracks. After the rockus interruptus of that 2018 tour and the tantric tease of the intervening Covid lockdown, Melton have some unfinished business. An October 2023 tour is poised to set the freshly minted quartet back onto the stages of Europe and within the cerebral folds of its fans. Turn To Earth, sure ... but keep your head in outer space. eric bensel , Paris , August , 2023 Sasquatch Borracho -Dave Pehling -spinning |
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