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Each year brings a series of much-ballyhooed metal reunion shows. Some tours are a deserved welcome back and others amount to little more than victory laps that come twenty years late. If the band is Saint Vitus – the 1980s Los Angeles act that literally shaped doom metal along with forefathers Black Sabbath - expectations will be even higher.

The members of Vitus are all pushing 50, but the added years aren’t holding them back.

Their recent one-off dates in California with up-and-coming doom/stoner bands Laudanum and Saviours showed that Vitus has lost none of its legendary tone or power. This show was at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco on January 29, 2010. Perhaps you can contribute their energy to the fact that their hard partying days are over. Whatever the reason, vocalist Scott “Wino” Weinrich, guitarist Dave Chandler and bassist Mark Adams might sound better than ever.

Laudanum

The Oakland doom/drone band (named for a Victorian-era opiate drug) opened the night with an eclectic set. The overall feeling of their music is profoundly discomforting; think Sunn O))) meets Skinny Puppy and that will get you in the ballpark. Vocalist Nathan Misterek has dreadlocks that stretch halfway down his back. His style is an interesting fit for the music and sounded almost at time like Seth Putnam of Anal C—t. The band’s music has a cinematic, avant-garde streak and was an interesting choice for an opener.

Saviours

The local feel of the show kept going with Saviours, who are also from Oakland.

Their aesthetic is part Lynyrd Skynyrd and part High on Fire. The band’s sound is original and energetic – it’s like someone introduced a bunch of gas-huffing guitar shredders to Dinosaur Jr. and southern rock. The band’s set included earlier material and tracks from last year’s album Accelerated Living. Austin Barber is a force, both with his whiskey-tinged vocals and his commanding guitar sound.
Saviours Concert Photos

St. Vitus

Vitus has always been an anomaly, the metal world’s version of noir fiction. When lesser bands were singing about chicks, cocaine or Satan, Vitus was preoccupied by visceral struggles like addiction and mental illness. Their best-known song “Born Too Late” is a testament to those struggles. Decades later, their unconventional approach has been borrowed by almost any metal band that chronicles society’s underbelly.

Vitus has aged considerably but the members look vibrant despite their legendary flair for excess. Chandler now resembles Gandalf from Lord of The Rings, if the fictional wizard decided to sport beaten jeans, a purple headband and Converse sneakers instead of a robe. Wino, who is in the midst of a much deserved career revival, is as lean and sinewy as ever and looks like the leader of a bike gang with his long gray mane. Adams is still ethereal and elusive but always playing in lockstep.

After a decent opener, Vitus picked up the pace on the third song, “Clear Windowpane,” the ode to hallucinogens from Born Too Late. Wino joked after the song that he dropped his first hit of acid when he was 12. “Look Behind You,” “St. Vitus,” and “I Bleed Black,” were particularly strong. The axe-blow riff from “White Stallions” consumed the club and carried listeners to some alternate dimension. Doom doesn’t really lend itself to moshing but fans were so energized it happened anyway; one guy in the front row had even shaved the St. Vitus symbol on both sides of his mohawk.

Chandler spent just a few minutes checking his amps and guitar before unleashing the gnarliest, most badass guitar sound I have ever heard live, perhaps even equaling Tony Iommi during the recent Heaven and Hell tours or the Sabbath reunion shows where Ozzy didn’t bring the band down. At one point, Chandler kneeled in front of a stack of Marshalls a la Jimi Hendrix at Monterrey and weaved a stream of riffs and feedback that was ominously heavy, yet startlingly beautiful. Whether on an album or live, his guitar tone can’t be copied; it isn’t of this earth. Yet when he takes the microphone he sounds like the eccentric uncle who spends his hours on a mysterious project in the garage that never gets finished.

Wino’s voice, now backed by decades of experience and missteps, is perhaps better suited than ever to sing Vitus’ songs about despair, drugs and death. And new drummer Henry Vasquez (replacing original Vitus drummer Armando Acosta) deftly holds together the whole enterprise together with powerful chops.

There’s already talk that St. Vitus may return to the studio and work on a new album. Can they pull it off? I wouldn’t count it out after seeing this show.

St. Vitus Concert Photos

Disclosure: The record company provided free access to this concert for review purposes. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.