Massive riffs from Black Mastiff and Lustre Creame

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A lot more bands are embracing big riffed ’70s, sludgy rock. Some do it better than others like Edmonton trio Black Mastiff who played a big, loud, thunderous, bone crushing set of slow paced riff rock at the Slice, Oct. 20.

Black mastiff bassist Clay Shea. Photo  by Richard Amery
 The trio, flanked by two fluorescent green pyramids set on each side of the stage, borrowed equally from Black Sabbath as they did from bands like fellow Edmontonians the Smalls with just a touch of Blue Cheer and more prominently Kyuss which is no surprise as  Kyuss frontman John Garcia has been a huge supporter of the band since their inception five years ago.

 They are touring in support of their second CD “Music Machine” so they played  a lot of songs from that. There were wah wah pedal drenched solos, massive riffs and a groovy basslines from Clay Shea, backed by the non stop blur that was drummer  Allan Harding on the kit linking it all together.


There wasn’t much banter in between songs and frontman Bob Yiannakoulias basically hid in the shadows on the left side of the stage, howling out tortured vocals and laying down those massive riffs emerging at the end to thank the enthusiastically head banging audience for coming out on a Tuesday night.


Local progressive Rock trio Lustre Creame (guitarist/ vocalist Aaron Trozzo, bassist vocalist Jeff Orriss and drummer Chris Lipinski)  opened the show with a  really tight and sober set of intricate progressive rock, which was mostly new material. Lustre Creame's Aaron Trozzo. Photo by Richard Amery

They played a few finger bleeding older songs, some grungy Alice in Chains like material from the last album and brought forth a passel of complicated guitar and bass riffs.

— By Richard Amery, L.A. beat Editor
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 28 October 2015 11:13 )