It was a cold night by any standards in Fullerton, but the Slidebar was about to heat up. That’s because it was time for Death by Stereo vs Tsunami Bomb with Toxic Energy and Ursula at The Slidebar in beautiful downtown Fullerton on Thursday, January 23… the crunch time show.
Sadly, due to trying to get through the sea of people trying to get into the venue, I missed Ursula, bummer as I was looking forward to that. I was there in time to see Toxic Energy. They played with such gusto that you’d never guess their guest drummer, Rodney Peralta had only learned a few songs to play by listening to them in the car earlier that day. Frontman Greg Dickson mentioned that they were playing a little “Chinese Fire Drill” 2/3rds into their set to let their guitarist, Chris McBride play the remainder of the set on drums. A multi-talented band indeed and a perfect paring to Death By Stereo as they have a very similar sound.Toxic Energy is Greg Dickson on lead vocals, Brent Waterworth on guitar and vocals, Brian Jones on bass and vocals, Chris Mcbride on guitar and vocals.
Tsunami Bomb’s Kate has fun yet rock edge voice that makes you want to sing along. With a contagious smile on her face throughout the entire set, you can see she thoroughly enjoys her music and preforming. If you haven’t listened to them, you are really missing out! Picture Bad Religion with a female on lead vocals and another female on vocals with a keyboard paired with a great drummer, guitarist and bassist! This was the show for crunch time as their bassist, Dominic Davi also had to learn part of one of their newest songs in the car on the way to the show -but you never would have guessed!They played a song from 1998 and it was amazing! Everything we’ve been listening to for 22 years and it was as fresh sounding as though it was off their new album.Unfortunately Oobliette Sparks on keyboards/Vocals was unable to make it on this tour and although Tsunami Bomb kicked ass, she was missed. Tsunami Bomb is Kate Jacobi on lead vocals, Dominic Davi on bass, Oobliette Sparks on keyboards/vocals, Gabe Lindeman on drums and Andrew Pohl on guitar.
Tsunami Bomb at The Slidebar
Last but definitely not least Death By Stereo. They opened with “The Plague” off their 2003 album “Into the Valley of Death” which was immedatly followed with “Beyond the Blinders” off the same album. These two songs combined were enough to get the crowd in pure enthusiastic mania. DBS has a huge following of fans on Facebook, Instagram, and even a Facebook group fan page so to see them in such an intimate setting is thrilling. With some choreographed songs involving each member of the band, frontman Efrem Schulz jumping into the crowd three times and literally working the entire room only to be followed by Robbo Madrigal playing bass in the crowd, it’s safe to say these guys aren’t just a band they are true performers in every sense of the word. Since Lead guitarist Dan Palmer is out on tour with another band, that left an opening for Eddie Oropeza, guitarist from Skullcrack to fill in. If you know how exceptional Dan Palmer is at guitar then you know his shoes are not easy to fill but Eddie pulled it off and did an amazing job!Death By Stereo has a long standing on-stage joke that “practice is for pussies.” Well, they did practice once before this show to get Eddie in the swing of things and it fell together beautifully.
Death By Stereo at the Slidebar
These amazing bands followed up this show with a short tour of 3 more shows in Los Angeles, Tempe, AZ and Las Vegas, NV all on consecutive nights. That’s one hell of a 4 day weekend! Death By Stereo includes: Efrem Schulz on vocals, Dan Palmer on guitar, JP Gericke on guitar, Robert Madrigal on bass and Mike Cambra on drums.
It was definitely a night filled with the sights and sounds of loud, great music with people who were having the time of their lives.
