The Obsessed, Howling Giant @ Brooklyn Meadows, NYC, April 12, 2024

The Obsessed, Howling Giant @ Brooklyn Meadows, NYC, April 12, 2024,

April 26, 2024
By Matthew Berliand
Photo by Matthew Berlyant
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It's not often that a show feels absolutely perfect, but it was such an occasion on this pleasant evening in Brooklyn. Enjoyed the opportunity to see veteran DC area doom/stoner metal legends The Obsessions and instead what I got was even better. Not only was there a great Obsessed set, but I also discovered a great new (to me) band. I'm getting a little ahead of myself though. Supporting the recently released excellent Gilded Sorrow, their first album since 2017 and just their fifth overall in a career spanning over forty(!) years, they played a blistering, heavy hour-long set with material spanning their entire career. The last two albums (including the excellent 2017 Sacred) and 1994 The Church within (their only album on a major label) hit harder, but no Obsessed set can top their debut EP's “Sodden Jackal” (the namesake of said EP, though later re-recorded for Sacred) and earlier material such as “The Way She Fly”. For Gilded SorrowOn “Stoned Back to the Bomb Age,” singer/guitarist Scott “Wino” Weinrich called out warmongers and others, addressing current events very much on our collective minds. In addition to the sheer power of their set, another cool thing is that Weinrich and the rest of the band (including new guitarist Jason Taylor) took to the stage immediately after the opening act, thus abandoning any pretense or rock star making and adding a communal element in the process, thereby establishing or at least hinting at the very punk attitude of separation between audience and performer. Both bands and fellow fans couldn't be nicer. I only knew one person there (an internet friend I recognized and met in person for the first time), but by the end of the night, I felt like I was part of the community.

What made the show even better was going crazy over the incredible Screaming Giant, a Nashville-based doom/stoner band that was The Obsessed's main support act on the final night of the tour. To simply call them a doom/stoner band does them a bit of a disservice, as their incredible harmonic vocals reminded this writer of no less than Alice in Chains, but at other times they were as heavy as your average death metal band. It's quite a trick, but in this case, they've taken all these styles and created their own. I wasn't familiar with their material before the show, but they said they were playing their great new album Glass Future completely. Forty-five minutes later, I had found a new favorite modern band in the genre. Wow!