Written in October 2023

On the north end of Las Vegas, a few blocks from the ambient red glow of The Strat and Resorts World and several miles from U2’s debut performance inside the $2.3 billion Sphere, a line of black shirts formed underneath a row of yellow bulbs and a bright sign advertising Spyder Plumbing, Downtown Tattoo and The Usual Place.

The black shirts were going to The Usual Place — although, by the looks of it, the tattoo parlor was likely the regular hangout for most of them. They were going to the music venue to see a metal show, and with their denim vests, leather combat boots and unkempt hair better resembling feral children raised by wolves than adult members of modern society, they, from a distance, were indiscernible from your typical Exodus thrashers or Pantera groovers.

But a close look at the iconography on the battle jackets revealed that these metalheads weren’t there for an Exodus or Pantera concert. The Lifelover logo on the arm of one attendee foreshadowed the depressive drawl that Ghost Bath would bring to the stage, while another fan’s Dissection patch presaged the blackened melodic meanderings of Uada and Cloak. This was an American black metal show.

The show in downtown Las Vegas on September 29 — which, at $25 a ticket, offered a significantly cheaper night of entertainment than the $300 Irish rock spectacle taking place on The Strip — was the third to last on a 30-show North American Tour that began in Colorado and climbed up the Midwest and into Canada before wrapping up in North Hollywood. Where better for a caravan of US black metalers to wind down a tour than in the Heart of the American Dream?

Cloak Unveils Black Metal Aesthetics to Come

The Georgia-bred Cloak, a four-piece formed in 2013, was the first to take the stage and ushered fans forward as an enchanting sample of shrieking chants blared through the venue.

“Las Vegas, join us,” guitarist and vocalist Scott Taysom growled before launching into a set scattered with Black ‘n’ Roll riffs that would impress Norwegian rockers Kvelertak and half-time breakdowns that made it feel like Integrity was opening the show. “We’ve come here tonight to honor the Black Flame.”

The theatrical statement only made sense coming from a shirtless man in a leather vest and armbands doing an honorable impression of Venom’s Cronos as the band grooved through numbers from their May 2023 full-length Black Flame Eternal. Packaged together, the theatrics were believable and served as a great introduction for the unwavering commitment to black metal aesthetics to come as the band signed off by teasing the sacred opening riff of Slayer’s Raining Blood. Maybe this was a thrash show, after all.

Ghost Bath Cools Down Las Vegas

The only corpse paint that presented itself at the show was smeared on the faces of North Dakota’s Ghost Bath, a Nuclear Blast-signed band that combines the shoegaze-inspired brightness of bands like Deafheaven and Alcest with the depressive shrieks of DSBM groups like Xasthur and Silencer.

“We’re Ghost Bath,” frontman Dennis Mikula, a bearded and frizzy-haired guitarist dressed in a black shawl, spoke through a haze of red fog as he and his four bandmates found their footing on the crowded stage. “We write rock n’ roll songs about killing yourself.”

Ghost Bath broke into the extreme metal mainstream (if there were such a thing) with their 2015 release Moonlover, which, with its melancholic and reverb-soaked melodies and tremolo-picked leads underneath Mikula’s guttural growls, established the band as a premier act in American blackgaze.

Perhaps the most compelling part of Moonlover and subsequent releases is the shriveled, falsetto-nearing shrieks provided by a backing vocalist, who also works the band’s merch table, on tracks like Happyhouse and Golden Number (The band performed Happyhouse on Friday night, but not Golden Number). In a highlight of the evening, that backing vocalist joined the band on stage and unearthed those shrieks as each member seemed to be perfectly in their element (so much so that they seemed unphased by a static hum that bled into part of the set).

The Boys In The Hoods

As the red fog turned to blue and fans returned from the hot dog and burger truck in the venue parking lot, the four hooded members of Uada, a melodic black metal group formed in Oregon in 2014, launched into a harmonious performance filled with soaring guitar leads, thudding double-bass and roaring vocals kicked off by The Purging Fire, the opening track on the group’s 2018 release Cult of a Dying Sun.

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The hoods, buckle-clad knee-high boots and v-shaped guitar with a sharp reverse headstock were a further tribute to the extent each band went to maintaining their particular brand of black metal aesthetic. But beneath the fog and under the hoods, the real show was memorable guitar harmonies that paid homage to melodic extreme metal greats like Carcass and Arch Enemy. These leads would make one think it was Uada, not Ghost Bath, that had three guitarists on stage.

At least one of those guitars sustained a high-pitched feedback before a drum fill synced with the venue strobe lights led the band into their next musical tirade that extended past midnight.

“Thank you, Sin City,” vocalist and guitarist Jake Superchi signed off as the band left the stage.

The three performances were a testament to the depth and breadth of American black metal, proving that there is more to the genre than the mythical one-man projects like Leviathan or the epochal Pacific Northwest bands like Agalloch and Wolves in the Throne Room.

As the post-show music faded in and fans made their way out the front exit, a few of them had to avoid colliding with a frenzied man kicking a soccer ball down the sidewalk. With the fog settled, it was back to reality in downtown Las Vegas.