live YOB video & interview (and still no NY dates)

August 19, 2010

by BBG

YOB at Scion Rock Fest (more here)
YOB

Of all the epic performances that I managed to catch at Scion Rock Fest, one smoked ’em all: the return of the mighty YOB who played to a packed crowd.

Yob, the three-man doom-metal band from Eugene, Ore., played a show here at Skully’s on Saturday night that left you wondering when you’d heard something as good, and when you might again. It was all graceful molasses cohesion, moving in focused minor-key riffs and strong processional grooves from the bassist Aaron Reiseberg and the drummer Travis Foster, lighted up by Mike Scheidt’s fat, fuzzed guitar tone. His solos were creeping abstraction with a plan, an almost visual display of cathedral-echo notes, bending and decaying and transforming.

The band envelops you without hard sell, in big and small ways. The biggest is that Yob just doesn’t get out much anymore. “We don’t make enough money on tour,” Mr. Scheidt said on Sunday. “I’ve got 14-year-old twins and an 11-year-old boy, and doom metal don’t pay the bills.” (Yob hasn’t come to New York since 2005, when it played the Lower East Side club Rothko.)

Yob might be one of the best bands in North America…-[NY Times]

Scion had a video crew in the house as the band tore through “3.5 songs” including the firestarter opening track “The Great Cessation”, and into “Burning The Altar”, “Ball of Molten Lead”, and a portion of “Catharsis”. Still no NYC dates to announce, but the never-seen-before video of two of those songs from Ohio, as well as an interview with Mike Scheidt, is below.

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Scion Rock Fest: YOB Interview