In celebration of this event I decided that I had to start smoking cigarettes again. Bummer. I know. But my sanity was seriously starting to slip and I knew that I would have a hard time enjoying this trip if I was to continue trying to remain quit. This really has little to do with this feature. I`m just confessing here in this feature because I made such a big deal out of my plight to quit in my previous Emissions from the Monolith IV feature. With that out of the way let`s get on to the live review.

Besides the passenger side window of the van failing while rolled all the way up and us having to sit in traffic for several hours on the way down the trip was uneventful. We arrived in Tacoma early and had some dinner and relaxed in the hotel for a while before heading down to the venue, Hell`s Kitchen, just in time to see Unearthly Trance hit the stage.

Before reviewing the bands I just want to rant and rave about just how cool of a venue Hell`s Kitchen is! I`ve never seen any shows in Tacoma but surely this has to be the best venue in town and one of the best I`ve been to on the whole West Coast so far. They`ve done this place right up with tattoo/hot rod style flames painted all over the walls. The atmosphere was great!!! They also had these cool immitation-flame flaming pires on the wall behind the stage which gave it a very doomy/gothic feel. But above and beyond the decor was the sound system/PA - holy shit!!! The sound quality was absolutely amazing! All 3 bands had immaculate sound and mixing. The songs literally sounded better and clearer than they do on CD!! Since Electric Wizard and especially Sons of Otis rely heavily on effects and swirling psychedelic echoing this was quite the accomplishment. The PA was huge for the room and looked brand new. I believe that Hell`s Kitchen has only been around for a couple of months so I don`t think they`ve had all that many shows there yet but all bands reading this should take note that it`s a great place to play! Fans should also take notice that this is a killer place to see bands play! It seems like it`s geared specifically for Stoner Rock style bands - if it`s not, I`m surprised. It also seems like they`ve been booking Stoner Rock bands agressively so it looks like these guys are pretty serious about the scene anyways. Dixie Witch and Acid King will be playing there on June 28th and if there are any bands that could benefit from a sound system like this besides Electric Wizard and Sons of Otis it`s Dixie Witch and Acid King. Any one who has the chance to make the trip to Tacoma for this particular tour should seriously consider it!

So.. Then.. Back to the live review.. After downing two glasses of straight whiskey to get the old brain lubricated I headed in to watch the Unearthly Trance set. Hmm.. They were good and definitely of the very-heavy slug-paced sludge variety. The songs they played this night reminded me of equal parts Khanate and Fistula - both bands which I love - but on this fine evening the Unearthly Trance thing wasn`t clicking for me. The songs all sounded too samey and the beats were so slow that I found them very hard to wrap my head around. Nolan assures me that the songs on their demo and 7" are much more diverse than the songs they played at Hell`s Kitchen so I am gonna check out their recorded material before making any final decisions about them. It`s not like they were "off" though - it`s fucking hard to play so slowly and they kept perfect time - I just thought it was a little too repetitive.

In between sets I headed out with stoned D and friends to a local park and smoked-up. I felt just like a teenager again! I was also treated to two spacecakes that were made by following the recipe we had posted in a previous StonerRock.com feature which can be found here. After another glass of whiskey I switched over to Pabst and the spacecakes were kicking in just in time for Sons of Otis to hit the stage. On CD Sons of Otis are very hit and miss with me. Some of their songs I fucking love to death and others are a little too generic for me. Live they kicked my ass in exactly the way I like my ass to be kicked! The depth of the distortion soothed my troubled mind and the psychedlic effects were layered so thickly over it and eveloped me so completely that I felt like I was back in the womb again! Ken sung in his echo soaked Wyndorfian style and played Hendrix style spacey wah-wah leads that absolutely melted my spacecake affected brain. Frank kept it all together with throbbing and hypnotizing bass lines while Ryan pounded on the drums so hard that they nearly fell apart. Actually. He definitely broke the bass drum pedal and possibly some other parts of the kit too. This was my first time seeing Sons of Otis after wanting to see them forever. They did not dissapoint in the slightest! Heavy, heavy, heavy! Spacey, spacey, spacey! Although, there was no smoke machine :( Which I think would have made their set even more enjoyable.

Up last were Electric Wizard. We`d read horror stories about some of their shows on this tour so far side by side with rave reviews of other shows (check out the Live Reviews Forum for some of those reviews) so we were all concerned about what we might be in for on this show. The good news: Electric Wizard did not self destruct at this show! The better news: Electric Wizard totally slayed and played the best set I`ve seen them do and this was the third time I`d seen `em. They were fucking on and the sound, like I said before, was absolutely amazing!! The best thing was that the quality of the sound and mixing was put before the volume. It wasn`t so loud that I even considered wearing earplugs but it was just perfectly loud and warm enough to be labelled as "perfect sound". Kudos to the sound guy, whoever he might be.

Nearly all the songs that Electric Wizard played were off their new one Let Us Prey and their last one Dopethrone with Supercoven being my favourite song of the evening and the only exception. I have been having a hard time getting into Let Us Prey, actually, but seeing so many songs off of it played live gave me a much better understanding of the album. Heavy, heavy, heavy! Evil, evil, evil!! Sure they`ve had a Spinal Tap slash Sex Pistols brand of a U.S. Tour this time around where they seem to get Tummlered at every turn but we lucked out and caught them on the perfect night! The Wizard... Fuck yeah!!! Unfortunately I couldn`t get a good angle for taking photos and only got shots of Jus.

And, as if this show wasn`t worth the trip alone, the next morning we headed to Portland and spent the day BBQing at the Wrong residence (thanks again Sheila and Rob!) with good friends, all of Witch Mountain and all of Porn in the hot sun before catching Argonaut, Yob, Porn and Witch Mountain at the Ash Street Saloon that evening. What a great weekend!

Click here for more reviews of this show in our Live Reviews Forum. Please feel free to post your own review!