Two nights out in a row — whoa-oa, look out for this guy. Okay fine, it was The Obsessed doing an early Sunday night, go-home-and-take-out-the-garbage-afterward gig at Autodidact Beer, which for me is as close to home as a venue could ever hope to be. It’s not a huge space, 100 people packs it, but every now and again something heavy stops through. Howling Giant were here last April. Electric Citizen came through in July, I think it was.

The Obsessed were two shows into an eight-date East Coast tour, going as far south as Maryland and as far inland as Ohio. The band are ostensibly still supporting their 2024 album, Gilded Sorrow (review here), but really they’re just kind of supporting the idea of being The Obsessed, and that means working, and that means touring. They were joined last year on drums by Bob Pantella of The Atomic Bitchwax, Monster Magnet, Raging Slab, etc. That’s a powerhouse hitter to punctuate the riffing of founding guitarist/vocalist Scott “Wino” Weinrich, and they’ve still got Jason Taylor on guitar and Chris Angleberger on bass, and they were plenty beastly last time I saw them at Freak Valley 2023 (review here), so slotting Monster Bob in there isn’t going to hurt anything other than your ears if you’re not the type to obsessively carry earplugs, which, yes, I definitely am.

But I’ll admit too part of what got me out of the house was the absolute lack of effort required to get there owing to fortunate geography. Parsippany doesn’t “get” shows, traditionally. It doesn’t have even a suburban ‘downtown’ where a venue might do well. So when a touring band — especially a heavy one — makes a stop in the former-wilds of North Jersey, it’s noteworthy. And if you live in a place where that kind of thing happens rarely, it’s all the more incumbent upon you to drag your ass off the couch and show up. Took five minutes to get here. Went the long way around.

Early meant a 6PM start for Revel at Dusk, who were opening. Not a band I knew, but they brought people out. Autodidact is a cool spot, nestled into a strip mall like it’s trying to keep itself a secret, Rt. 10 Eastbound whipping by about 15 feet from the door. I sat on a wall bench before the show, heard one of the Revel at Dusk guys tell a friend they were “a loud band,” so, knowing little about them either way, I was curious to find out. They wound up crossing genre lines readily between riff-metal, some punk, some proggier atmospheric parts, some Clutch, some Down, some Tool, tonal crunch and a bit of vocal harmony when called for. The grooves were modern and had a bounce, but somebody in there is metal, or at least plays like it. True enough, loudness was had.

The room was well packed by the time they were done, and they said their thanks and were out the back door stepping down from the drum riser to get outside, where actual dusk is still a ways off, The Obsessed correspondingly loading in through the same door; one out, one in. For a place that didn’t set itself up for shows from the outset — that is, they didn’t build Autodidact with a stage — they do pretty well here, and I’m sorry to harp on it, but every time I can see a band come through and play here is a gift. But the fact that people showed up gives me hope that more will happen in this space. I should be so lucky.

Some technical issue before they went on, and I had one of those is-this-all-going-too-well-to-be-true, but they worked on whichever amp it was until the final fuckit was issued and they started the set. It was a mix of classics and newer stuff — “Streetside” rolling hard alongside “Sacred” and “Stoned Back to the Bomb Age,” cabs piled so tight on the stage that part of Pantella’s kit was obscured depending on where you stood. The room was everybody-stands-still packed, and I got my pictures and moved back to allow people who take up less space to have a spot. Pantella has had plenty of time to settle in over the better part of the last year — again, this is a working band — and it wasn’t a surprise to find that he held that nod together, but it was killer anyhow.

I could go on about this band’s place in Wino’s legacy in doom blah blah blah, but you know all that, and I feel like it’s worth emphasizing how when they were tearing into the gallop of “Streamlined,” it wasn’t 30 or 40 years ago I was thinking about. The legacy wasn’t the thing. The volume was. That inimitable tone and the push of the rhythm section behind the riffs. Of course it’s doom, but it rocks too, and I guess maybe that still feels a little transgressive in the delivery of a song like “Neatz Brigade”; an individualist raising of a middle finger, the square universe recedes as the crowd moves closer.

It got dark. The energy level did not abate in the singular groove, and the two-guitar arrangements only make it sound meatier as a rhythm line can continue while the solo happens, riffs are effectively doubled and it’s one more dynamic to play out across the span of a set, which it did. “It’s Not Okay” landed with what felt like a warranted piling of low end, and duh Pantella was right there on the turns in the faster stuff, even if midtempo stuff is the band’s signature, which I guess is what I was talking about above. The Obsessed’s take, influential as it has been, hasn’t ever really been effectively copied. Not for lack of trying. But they’re enduringly distinct in persona and riffcraft, and it’s comforting in some ways to now feel like they’re going to keep going until they can’t.

Because Wino’s had bands, right? He just put out a record with Ritual Arcana, and he did a solo record last year, and maybe at some point he’ll decide he wants to do something entirely different, but this incarnation of The Obsessed, starting with The Obsessed reuniting in 2012, then Spirit Caravan getting back together, then that band becoming The Obsessed, doing the Sacred (review here) album and evolving into what it is today, over subsequent studio output and much, much touring, feels sustainable in a way that it’s easy to appreciate. Whatever they do, they’ll do it by their own prerogative.

They covered Spirit Caravan’s “Lost Sun Dance” to close the regular set and came back out for “Brother Blue Steel,” a summary handing-of-ass that went over well with the assembled population, and when it was done, same deal, right out the back door behind the stage. It was barely after 8PM. No shit, I got home in time to go upstairs and read The Two Towers for bedtime.

Thanks to Craig Cirinelli for putting on the show. Thanks to Ken Wohlrob for the lift and the company, thanks to Autodidact for existing, to The Obsessed for making it part of the trip, and The Patient Mrs. for everything all the time forever. Thank you for reading.

Couple more pics after the jump.

Revel at Dusk

The Obsessed

Tags: New Jersey, Parsippany, Revel at Dusk, The Obsessed

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2026 at 8:22 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.