Royal Thunder sounds like a nickname for Zeus at Somergloom on Saturday, 24 August 2024.

The heavy bill of heavy music weighs heavily at Arts for the Armory, showcasing Black Pyramid, Adam McGrath & Stephen Brodsky, The Infinity Ring, Oldest Sea, Kira McSpice, Girih, and Strawberry Coffin.

Tech issues steal some thunder on the back half of the bill.

The booker behind the local live music series Illegally Blind (puts together the Fuzzstival and more), Jason Trefts, is raising money to start a non-profit organization, staffed by brain tumor survivors, “that will provide free short-term care coordination services for people in the Boston, MA area recently diagnosed with a brain tumor.”

The mission of the project hits close to home for Trefts. In his own words, “I was diagnosed with an incurable Astrocytoma at 24 years old. I have spent the decade-plus since navigating chronic disabling conditions while working in the human services field.”

“Astrocytoma” is a type of brain tumor. And while Trefts has been dealing with that, he has also been working in care coordination himself, observing first hand how important the work is. His proposed non-profit would make more of that important work happen for more people. Find out the details and donate at the Still Around Gofundme.

The three-piece Strawberry Coffin is a love letter to a certain breed of hard and heavy psych rock. The heavy stuff before the metal-edged turn. And they take the ‘coffin’ business seriously, rolling up to the gig with two coffin-shaped guitar cases, complete with plush red velvet interior to guarantee your eternal rest is restful.

All instrumental post rock from the three-piece Girih. Every song was like a motorcycle with flaming wheels drag racing through Valhalla. Extra points for the orchestral mallets.

Solo guitarist Kira McSpice was doing some heavy lifting in the festival schedule. On Saturday she performed a double set in the Rooted cafe, which follows up her set at the Thursday night Somergloom pre-party in Medford. Her medium tempo, medieval patterning sports shades of Nighttime. And her otherworldly voice lends to the impression that you’ve fallen into a time-traveling phone booth headed back to the Renaissance where you’ll have to retrieve the bewildered personage of Mickey-Angelo in order to ace your high school history exam and avoid getting sent to military school.

The four-piece Oldest Sea should team up with Kira McSpice for a joint project called Oldest McSpice. On its own, though, the band produces some powerfully gloomy slow-to-medium tempo wailers. A strong funeral dirge energy. The fronter’s vocals makes the machine purr.

When Hump Day News covered this band a million years ago at Nice Fest, The Infinity Ring performed as a four-piece and brought a leaner, more metal attack. Fast forward to Somergloom in 2024 and the band is bringing at least seven people on stage, including a violinist. Maybe the violin is skewing my assessment, but I think I felt and heard a stronger folk sensibility in the band. Like a band playing traditional music in the back of an Irish pub, albeit plugged-in and producing a monstrous sound.

Northampton’s Black Pyramid have a new album out called The Paths of Time Are Vast. It’s a 16-wheeled highway hauler of an album full of trilogies, suites, and epic standalone numbers that run 10-minutes or more. The sound is metal, a little doomy, with psych curlicues. There were some sound issues bedeviling the set, and the band let the sound guy know it. Sometimes these issues seem bigger to the band than the audience. The audience might not even notice, if it’s not pointed out to them. Sometimes. Other times, like when a vocal mic goes dead and stays dead, it's hard not to notice. Strange energy around the troubleshooting attempts. At a certain point the band just decided to grin & bear it, with seemingly no solution on the horizon.

As with Big Brave, Atlanta’s Royal Thunder was, like, a real headliner. The kind of nationally-recognized and -lauded band that would draw a crowd with or without the rest of the bill. An updated version of hard rock with prog chops when they want to, otherwise it was just straight blownout barndoor rocking. Except for the opening number, which was a stripped down duet with the superlative vocalist erupting over a backing keyboards. There was Robert Plant meets Jack White energy in the gritty, scale-climbing siren song. Lucky for you if you heard that first number, with the vocals in full blossom, because the sound issues returned for the headliner, cutting out the lead singer’s mic for (nearly?) whole songs at a stretch. Damn shame.

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