YOB LIVE ONE OF THE GREATEST SHOWS EVER + MEGA GREED UPDATE

Ynow it sucks Koala balls that none of my friends love super heavy not heavy metal bands because I had no-one to share one of my top 10 gigs of all time with and that was the mighty YOB tonight.

GFR NEWS | TAKE 51

YOB LIVE CONCERT REVIEW

Portland natives YOB live at Max Watts, Melbourne CBD 19th Feb 2026

I have recently developed tinnitus and damaged my left ear so my apologies that I missed the support bands, I have been working a lot of late, so I just saw headliner YOB - apparently the Sydney band Mountain Wizard Death Cult were awesome - anyway smoked a huge joint walking up flinder st just made it as YOB started and I walked in and stood all the way back up at upper bar so I wouldn't have to wear my ear plugs (they ruin the detail of the sound for mine) and yet it was so loud and heavy and packed shitless it didn't matter, omfg what a humongous gargantuanisticlly super number 2 inducing heavy as fk show that was!

Thank you Mike your vocal in one song made me weep - you clearly have gone through some heavy times in your life - and thank you to the tall good looking bass player Aaron and the stocky humble as fuck drummer Dave who actually came out and talked to everyone for ages straight after playing.

Talking of Dave my only gripe on the night was his drums were not loud enough, frontmen, guitarists and soundies gotta realize the drums are THE MOST CRITICAL COMPONENT when rock bands play live, not on recording I mean in a live situation, and everything the audience gets starts with the drummer and if you go back to the stone age the drum was the first musical instrument used in live performance and in all celebrations of live music the energy of the drummer provides the earth that all the other instruments grow from. At all gigs I go to I watch the drummer the most, I get my energy from how hard he hits those skins!

Wow YOB on this night they were the best 3-peice in the world by a mile and all of them for my ears did not miss one note all night, very rare that with progressive and complex 15m songs and they were tighter than your very first fumbling try at anal three years into your second serious relationship and that is what happens when you have done 300 gigs in the last 18 months your playing is blisteringly tight.

And shit yes they played Marrow from the Clearing The Path To Ascend LP as the penultimate song, I went bananas screaming and danced metal style clawed my brain in it's brilliance. Then, with no encores because all YOB songs are so damn long, it was a very new breakneck paced track from the latest album a 12 minute ball breaker thunderous from hell track to close and then Melbourne peeps erupted in a mighty lions roar and they were gone and I knew I only had eighty bucks in the old banky rank a-cunt and my rent wes s'post to debit today but they are always late thank fk so I ordered a T-Shirt and prayed to the eftpos gods and was rewarded with a great white doom logo design on black tee (they were sold out of the one I wanted with pale red and white logo on grey tee) and then I immediately put it on..

..me just home from YOB circa 1am, sweaty and deaf and content w/ me new tee!

.. put it on and skulled my lovely carlton draught tinny (tinnys suck but how fkn good is carlton draught just like ACDC they never got hipster suckered in and now they are just shitting on these endless crappy boutique beers) and I ran outside partially deaf and triumphant from listening to Mikes complex slow heavy screaming whispering serenading vocals and his disgustingly complex jazz-like chords with layered finger picking that make him sound like four guitarists at once and then i walked home..

..walked all the way home to saiiinty kilda shunning the trams and the zombies that sit on them staring at their phones all white and ghostly and I smoked another joint and about 4 rollie cigs..

..and the weather and feeling of the world in the air were forgiving so it was a pleasure to walk in the dark along the tree lined st kilda road on a late summer night as Meatloaf used to sing, some would say st kilda rd is a boulivard of ghosts and spirits and certainly overhead flying bats and then I wrote this in my head while walking..

Anyway that's it - I just had to share what a mighty band YOB are - seriously it was up there with the very best shows I have seen like Janes and Meshugga and FNM and Beastie Boys and the Misfits original punk lineup.

MEGA GREED UPDATE

It seems to me people with a bunch of money back in the 20h century a lot of them knew what they wanted to spend it on an not just that they wanted more and more. The young guys who put on Woodstock (the rich promoters put in plenty too but they had The Filmore etc ongoing to bail them out after) these guys invested all their money working weeks night and day and lost it all but didnt care they all got a bunch of great careers from it and nowadays millionares just seem to want to keep it and make more and they seem daft and brainless to me. Even the super successful oz musos and bands seem to have just disappeared when it comes to putting back into the original music scene, back in my day, yeah grumpy old man time deal it fuckers, back in my youth the Cosmic Psycos guys and the promoters and bookers and venue owners, people like Darren Pitmen and Bob Blunt and stores like Phantom Records and Red Eye in Sydney and in Melb Au Go Go and the Meanies bass player and Jo Cameleri and John Farnem and plenty of others put shitloads of their time and work and money back into SUPPORTING ORIGINAL MUSIC and not just fucking live either, they built studios and formed labels and bled for their stable of bands and spent 20 or 30 years working full time in the live and recording industry.

Yep really rich people these days have no balls to just risk their entire worth at something amazing but that used to happen all the time.

Now we live in the era of MEGA GREED and people are like little animals cowering in the dark - petrified by market con-fucking-ditions and mine mine mine - and no one shares or gives money to the most helpless and in need cos their fkn internet phones mean they can be cunts and say they got no cash - year that is the reality of the post covid thought jail we live in - enforced by the evil fucks who hijacked the internet and now own it's knackers in a vice like grip - well fuck those guys I say put your time and money into doing what you love right now today forget the cost - the cost is what makes your hairs stand up and your heart sing - and risking it all reminds you how much you love your friends and your girl and your guy and weeeellll you gonzo journalism disciples that is it from this grumpy old gray haired writer I havnt had a shower in a week or watched the news or advertisingownsyourdignity-sport in years or worn undies for decades or stopped kicking against the pricks for ever - gnighty then.