I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: April 5, 2019] YOB

I hadn’t heard of YOB before this show.  I was there for Voivod.  But I assumed they must be compatible if they were playing together.

I also had a ticket to see And the Kids (a very different type of band) that night at Johnny Brenda’s.  After jumping in to see Dilly Dally upstairs in the Foundry after the Guster show in The Fillmore, I thought, well, why can’t I go to both shows if one ends early enough.  Johnny Brenda’s is about ten minutes from Union Transfer.  The Johnny Brenda’s show started later than this show, so I considered my options.

After the pummeling from Amenra and the fun but heavy set from Voivod, I was pretty wiped out.  I had read that YOB was “Epic, crushing, and heavy beyond words.”

So I decided to stay for the first song and see if I wanted to hear more.

YOB is a trio from Oregon.  YOB lead singer and guitarist Mike Scheidt, nearly died in 2017 from acute diverticulitis.  The band’s 2018 album, “Our Raw Heart,” deals with this, apparently.  The rest of the trio includes Aaron Rieseberg on bass and Travis Foster on drums.

YOB is loud.  Very loud.  They incorporate elements of sludge, doom and stoner metal.  They started their set with “Prepare the Ground”

With a pummelling 1-2-3 1-2 1-2-3 beat the song starts out loud and just gets louder.  There are faster guitar parts in the middle, but the glacial (in terms of heaviness, not really speed) pace doesn’t alter much.  The biggest surprise for me was that Scheidt is an old-school high-pitched heavy metal screamer.  No growling vocals, just big power and soaring notes.  It initially felt like a bit of a mismatch, but it was nice having his voice soar above the low rumble of the music (which occasionally had high guitar notes, but was mostly the heavy rumble of the low notes).

“Prepare the Ground” is nine minutes long.  I checked my watch when it ended and it was 9:45, I could easily make it to the other show if I left then.

Most of their songs are over ten minutes, so I felt like I “got” what they were doing.  Although I have since listened to the second song “Ablaze” and it is quite different with some quieter, more melodic moments.

But I did the unthinkable–I left the show and went somewhere else.

I have since read that they played for nearly two hours!  All of seven songs.

I would certainly see YOB again in a different setting–maybe without two hours of opening acts.  But I needed to get into a different headspace.

1. Prepare the Ground
2. Ablaze
3. The Lie That Is Sin
4. Marrow
5. Grasping Air
6. Adrift in the Ocean
7. Quantum Mystic