Last weekend, the place to be was south of the border, as Acid King brought their Busse Woods 20th anniversary tour to Buffalo’s Mohawk Place — where you can still get a Labatt Blue for four bucks (closer to $5.25 Canadian…but still not bad, eh?) This was by far the shortest distance I’ve travelled to see Lori S. and company; after getting their set cut short at Psycho Las Vegas, I went to Austin, TX to see ’em open for Arthur Brown. But this would also be the first time I’d seen ’em headline.
Opening the evening was Warish, a San Diego trio with no less a legend than Tony Hawk’s son on guitar and vocals. While they’re no strangers to the San Diego psych scene, their sound is more similar to The Stooges than Earthless — but hey, there can be only one Earthless, right?
While Portland has produced no shortage of stoner/doom bands…Wizard Rifle is not one of them. This eclectic duo does have a few heavy riffs, mind you–it’s just that they’re blended in with some thrash breakdowns and black-metal drumming. And while both members provide vocals, neither was audible in the mix.
As expected, Acid King treated us to Busse Woods in its entirety, albeit not in the exact running order, beginning with the title track and ending with “Electric Machine.” Then they came back for a 30-minute encore, playing a couple tunes from their most recent record, as well as “2 Wheel Nation” from Acid King III. They’ve actually completely swapped out their rhythm section since 2017 — but it doesn’t really matter who’s on bass and drums as long as you’ve got Lori on vocals and guitar.
