Acid Bath, Castle Rat, The Sword, Mastodon, Blood Incantation, Secret Chiefs 3 and other metal-adjacent bands kicked off Levitation with great music but a not so great venue.
Back in May I hesitated when I bought early tickets for the Autumn 2025 edition of Levitation Festival. They moved it from it’s usual Halloween weekend up a month to September, increasing the chances of 100+ degree days. I assume they felt it worth the gamble because the bigger bands would be playing indoors this time at the Palmer Events Center, with it’s increased capacity of 3,146 compared to Stubb’s 2,500. The problem is that Palmer Corporate Petri Dish is made for conventions (like the Austin Record Show), not concerts, and has the acoustic design of an airplane hangar (that would be none). For brevity, I’m just going to call it the hangar from here on. Sure enough, the long-suffering sound techs behind the soundboard struggled to get a mix that’s remotely acceptable.
Sadly I missed all but the last song of Castle Rat’s set. Given how quickly they’ve blown up since last year, it’s kind of insulting that they were stuck with the opening slot before everyone had arrived. Fans more dedicated than I who showed up early, judging from the climax I saw on “Sun Song,” were treated to a top tier theatrical epic doom metal show with great costumes, stories, stagecraft, and of course, fresh tunes courtesy of their second album The Bestiary, just released Sep 19. That has quickly leveled up from their debut album from just last year. I treated myself to Castle Rat socks and a patch.
Opinions were divided, but overall Denver’s Blood Incantation reached new levels of popularity and acclaim with last year’s Absolute Elsewhere. Unfortunately their dense hybrid of progressive death metal and Berlin school space rock mostly sounded like a gray slurry with the shit acoustics of the hangar.
While I’d seen The Sword a half dozen times over the years, it’s been a while. I thought I’d get to see them yearly once I’d moved to Austin, but they broke up for a while. Now they’re touring again, celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Warp Riders, and hopefully will record a new album. They kicked off with a cool arrangement of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” I had left locals Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol early (they play all the fests) to get a good sweet spot for an attempt to get decent sound. Unfortunately another 1,000 people had the same idea, and I had to bail after 15 minutes and watch them from the back. Not quite as tight when they were a nonstop touring machine back in the day, still great to have ’em back.
Secret Chiefs 3, led by Trey Spruance (Mr. Bungle), were a great palate cleanser. I have eight of their albums spanning 1996-2018, and I only recognized one song, “Ishraqiyun: Tistrya,” maybe also “Vajra.” Their quirky hybrid of psychedelic avant-prog, jazz fusion and Persian/Afghan/Turkish music heavy on the Middle Eastern scales is immensely enjoyable, but they’re a pretty cult band, and was glad to see Levitation bring ’em in.
The biggest draw for me was a band I last saw play 30 years ago in a small room in Chicago with probably no more than 30 people. Back then, Acid Bath were just a hard rock band that played their own uniquely dark and filthy mix of grunge, noise rock and metal. It was only decades later that they were shoveled into the NOLA sludge metal category after the fact. Like Melvins and Kyuss, they simply had their own unique thing going, and those that followed them simply huffed at the fumes and boiled down one of their many aspects. Lately I’d probably listened to Dax Riggs’ psych noir solo albums more often, but wow, did their set sound fresh as a blackened daisy. They managed to get the best sound of all the bands that day, their set balanced between their two albums When the Kite String Pops (1994) and Paegan Terrorism Tactics (1996). In front of me there was a little tween girl mouthing the lyrics to every song, jumping up and down like she was at a Taylor Swift show. In fact, a lot of the audience were young, born after those albums came out. Best in fest!
It’s a pretty remarkable thing, since their reunited last year, their popularity has exploded, reaching new generations from streaming, online forums, and bands like Slipknot citing them as an influence. One cool band crossed over to near mainsteam level popularity, a hundred to go! They abused us with fog machines too much for me to get a good picture, so here’s this.
I listened to The Armed’s The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed when it came out August 1, and their brand of post-hardcore/noise/mathcore is effective for what it is, but not something I return to a lot. The band had a varied balance of tight, loud ‘n’ screamy, and more accessible melodic rockers. A solid pick for a really varied day of metal-adjacent bands.
The headliner hardly needs any introduction, the mighty Mastodon, the band who I thought might reach Metallica level popularity after their brilliant second album, Leviathan (2004). I’ve seen them so many times since 2003 that I figured I’d be okay if I got tired and bailed before they came on. But the weather was perfect, dry and pleasant, and I got to rest up on the lawn during The Armed, and ended up staying for the majority of their set. Sounding distinctly less sludgy than I’m used to, they suffered again from the bog standard acoustics of the hangar. I could hear boom boom bass and drums, high end guitar parts, but not the midrange. The second temporary guitarist to fill in since Brent Hinds left the band in March (and sadly died in August in a motorcycle crash) didn’t seem to fit in, with his willowy figure and intricate prog stylings. That said, I wouldn’t be mad if they kept him on to record their next album if they can make something as good as Crack the Skye (2009). For some reason, their set favored material from their weakest albums, The Hunter (2011) and Once More ‘Round the Sun (2014) with three songs each, two from their last Hushed and Grim (2021). They did encore with their classic “Blood and Thunder” from Leviathan after I’d left. I guess the younger audience appreciates the late period Mastodon songs more than geezer Gen Xers like I do.
Once again, Levitation pulled off a well curated first day of their fest. However, the hangar is a crap venue with bad sound a sterile corporate vibe, no matter how many hairy ‘heads you cram in it. It’s bad enough that I don’t really want to go today for Goat Girl, Swervedriver, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and TV on the Radio, so I probably won’t. Fingers crossed Levitation will find a better venue next year and don’t kill the fest by trying to get too big too fast, like Pitchfork and Lollapalooza did (Pitchfork folded, Lolla just keep on sucking).
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