Live Review: Planet Desert Rock Weekend V – Night 1
Posted in Reviews on January 31st, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Earlier – Before Show
Oh shit, I’m in Las Vegas. I opened the window four times on the five-and-a-half-hour flight here. Once was at Newark. Two in the air: the Rockies and the desert. And the last was at the gate after landing. My wife had recommended I watch the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. I may yet on the way home, but I played Zelda the entire time I was in the air. I slaughtered every lynel in Hyrule and they all came back to life and I did it again.
Adam Sage of the band Sonolith, who it turns out is quite a generous dude, kindly offered to put me up for the weekend — thank you, Adam and Jocelyn — and even picked me up at the airport. A stop at the grocery store and the weed store and I’ll of a sudden I’m hanging among the antiques and Weimaraner swag listening to Spaceslug, which was the right call, with a couple hours before the show. Mellow hangs. May it be a theme for the weekend.
Four bands tonight: Unida, MR.BISON, Sons of Arrakis and Samavayo. That’s California, Italy, Canada and Germany represented. Tell me the last time you saw a bill like that.
Okay? So that’s kind of the thing about this fest — it’s not big, but it’s stacked, and it’s thoughtfully curated. Of the four bands playing tonight, the only one I’ve seen is Unida, and it was a different incarnation of the band. Tomorrow is five bands, Saturday is six, Sunday is five, but each one brings something special to the mix. They’re all here for a reason. The whole weekend’s going to be a blast.
Just like you’ve heard in all those heavy metal songs about the night, here’s ‘the night’:
Samavayo
Samavayo aren’t the only reason I’m here this weekend, but they’re a big part of it. The Berlin-based three-piece have made a low-key tour of coming to the US for the first time, and the last show is tomorrow in Los Angeles. They locked into a groove and didn’t look back. The intricacy of their songwriting, and their blend of influences remains their own. Not that there was any doubt, but they did very much sound like they’d been on tour for a week, which they have been. Tight, having a good time, making the sing-along at the start of “I Keep on Rolling” extra fun, outright nailing the three-part vocal in “Vatan.” The kick drum pedal broke, which gave guitarist/vocalist Behrang Alavi a chance to thank the crowd and sound sincere in talking about how kindly they’ve been treated on their first US trip. The way they open up to a chorus, where you don’t even realize why your stomach was tight until the tension releases, how the songs seem to follow linear paths even in verses and choruses. This was my first time seeing them, and meeting then. I feel fortunate to have been able to do both. They go to L.A. tomorrow and then are out, taking their big grooves with them. It was lucky for those who got to see the band they brought them in the first place, let alone have them set a nigh-on-unreachable standard for the rest of the weekend with the big rock finish at the end of the set.
Sons of Arrakis
Another first for me were Canada’s Dune-themed melodic heavy rockers Sons of Arrakis. They were younger than I was expecting — which isn’t actually weird but kind of was anyway because I’ve seen photos of them before, but whatever. Very clearly a band working from an envisioned methodology of craft and performance. The four-piece are out supporting their second album, Volume II (review here), and they brought the songs to Vegas with due push, referencing 1970s rock but not necessarily boogie. I think maybe they’re what modern heavy rock sounds like. I’m cool with that. They spliced in on-theme samples between the songs and didn’t say much from the stage accordingly, but the riffs are there and the songs they make from them are memorable. Somehow I doubt this will be the last time I run into them at a festival setting, and at least now I know enough to look forward to the next one. I feel like their next album will tell a lot of the tale about the band they ultimately want to and will be, but go see them in the meantime so you can feel cool later.
MR.BISON
When I talk about Planet Desert Rock Weekend being impeccably and purposefully curated, from here on out I’ll cite the vibe liquefaction of Italy’s MR.BISON as an example from here on out. Neither Sons of Arrakis nor Samavayo were without some flourish in their sound, but the keys in MR.BISON, the effects on the guitars and vocals, made it something else. A shift in sound from the first two of the night, but the point is there’s a linear sense to it all. There’s a story being told in the progression from one band to the next, and MR.BISON tripped it out at just the right moment to feel like what the night has been leading toward up to this point — which happens to be true, technically — and pull off that vibe-shift, but still hold onto some sense of heavy continuity, while also daring funk and floaty solos back to back. They have grown into being this band, and that maturity suits them, but the songs were expansive even at their most thrusted, and a spacious feeling pervaded, highlighting some of the mood of last year’s Echoes From the Universe (review here) while seeing an overarching groove and hitting into a few bigger moments, double-tracking vocals live with effects. I guess the word is dynamic. At the very least, they were that. They were also a bunch of other stuff that all rounds down to awesome.
Unida
Enter the headliner. The “new” Unida — vocalist Mark Sunshine, guitarist Arthur Seay, bassist Collyn McCoy and drummer Mike Cancino — have a couple years under their belt at this point, and they absolutely owned the room from the moment they started. They seemed to find another level of volume, and it’s not like the evening had been lacking to that point, and used it to deliver a pro-shop, touring-band-type set. Old songs and new in set, which was fun. I’m eager to hear this band move forward, and writing new songs counts big as a part of that, as much as I have an affection for Unida classics. It’s been 12 years, but last time I saw them was at Desertfest London 2013 (review here), and that was a different kind of novelty, but now that I’ve seen this Unida, having seen that one, they’ve got something that could work. On stage, it already does, with Sunshine giving due homage to the band’s original era while beginning to put a stamp of his own on the newer material. I don’t know what the band’s plans for the rest of this year are — and yes, I asked — but they were just right to finish out this night, and they gave the narrative of the successive sets the blowout ending it deserved. There were some technical issues with the guitar late in the proceedings — and during a new song, which I feel like might sting more to start over when you didn’t actually screw it up. A couple minutes of jamming and on-mic shenanigans and they were back up and rolling, as was the entire room to that riff from the new one, and then it happened again and Arthur grabbed a different guitar, which was probably the way to go since they made it through the song. Mark Sunshine: “We’ve been on a journey with you people.” True enough. They finished and sent the crowd staggering into the cool of the desert midnight.
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So tired. More pics after the jump. I know it was only four bands, but I did a fair amount of socializing tonight and my brain is done. More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
