San Francisco, The Fillmore, 1/29/2022

Okay, full disclosure before we get started: I love Blackwater Holylight. For about the past year, they’ve held the title of being the band that I name when people ask me “What’s your favorite band?” I saw them last August at Psycho Las Vegas and I had tickets this show even before that. So it should go without saying that I was excited to see the band at the house that Bill Graham built. Forgive me if I come across as a fanboy in this article. On to it.

The set opened the set with a spaced-out and doomy performance of “Who the Hell,” with Sarah McKenna’s dark-mausoleum synths and Eliese Dorsay’s pounding, heartbeat-rhythm bass drum providing an intro that acted as the calm before the storm of distorted guitars that was to follow. From the top of the set, Sunny Faris’ vocals sat more in the background of the mix than they do on Blackwater Holylight’s studio recordings. This, coupled with the absence of guitarist and death-growler Erika Osterhout due to illness seemed to create a sound that leaned more into the shoegaze side of the band’s influences. This was a welcome change, as it was different than the other time I saw them and did not mark a departure from the band’s heaviness.

For my money, the highlight of the show was the lightning-fast version of “Motorcycle.” The best way to describe the performance is it sounded like the studio version of the song being played at 45 RPM instead of 33 1/3. It ripped hard, especially when sandwiched between more ethereal songs that made it seem even faster by comparison. The crowd favorite moment was during the set’s closer, “Every Corner,” when guitarist and bassist, and now vocalist Mikayla Mayhew surprised everyone by delivering the death growl vocals usually provided by Osterhout, and sung by Inter Arma’s Mike Paparo on the LP. Her vocals were absolutely brutal, and she managed to make it look completely effortless for the whole verse.

I stayed for the headliner, All Them Witches, but couldn’t really get into them. To my ears, they’ve always sounded like the Grateful Dead had a baby with Andrew Peterson and said baby found a Gibson Fuzz-Tone and never looked back. The crowd looked more like hippies than metalheads. There were a few good guitar and organ solos throughout the set, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just staying because the venue gives out free posters after the end of the show (they didn’t this time). Needless to say, they weren’t a band that made a fan out of me from their live show.

Blackwater Holylight’s opening gig wrapped up in Fort Collins, Colorado last night, but All Them Witches’ North American Tour hits the Midwest in March and the East Coast in May before culminating with a set at Bonnaroo on June 19.