Graveyard & Uncle Acid Bring Peace Across The Wasteland

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats returned to Minnesota for the first time in three years, teaming up with Graveyard on a co-headlining American tour which features openers Twin Temple for the first portion and Demob Happy on the final stretch of dates. However, this time around they played First Avenue’s main room.

I had just missed Demob Happy’s set when I arrived at the main room, but was eagerly anticipating the fuzzy sounds of metal’s psychedelic past, a style these bands focus on and capture so well. Graveyard tends to have more of a chugging, motorcycle rock sound than a psychedelic lo-fi style; but none-the-less they were a perfect match to co-headline the stage together, and both proved to draw the same crowd.

Graveyard burns rubber and melts faces.

I’m unaware of how this duo conspired to co-headline this Peace Across The Wasteland tour together, but I am aware that they are both touring in support of 2018 releases. For Graveyard this is Peace, and for Uncle Acid this is Wasteland, both of which are the bands’ fifth releases. Odd coincidence? Or part of a thicker plot…? This plants for me a Mad Max-like vision of traversing an alien landscape only for those on board to drift deeper and deeper into a drugged out state of consciousness and imminent doom.

With both new releases were played through on this conjoined tour, I’m sure this combination summoned equally as much new music as evil-minded forces on any given night of the run. This proved to be true as the show went on.

After Graveyard’s lingering scent of incense diffused on stage, Uncle Acid’s silhouettes appeared, cloaked in an evil red glow, with their name in psychedelic lettering melting on a banner behind them. Through all the lighting and song changes, or the drinks and weed smoke, their set brought the crowd through chapters of hazy, LSD soaked Mandy-like 80s horror flick, to the grainy and colorful world of a dark sci-fi fantasy novel.