Each month we’ll showcase a selection of dark music events happening in the bay area. This series will focus on live music, with the occasional club night or cultural event thrown in. Genres featured will range from traditional gothic rock and industrial to music in adjacent genres, such as neofolk, shoegaze, and noise rock. A full event list can be found at the bottom of the page. April 6th: Chasms at Bottom of the Hill 21+ 8 PM $12 Adv / $15 Door (shoegaze, dream pop) Haunting, atmospheric, and intimate, Chasms touches a number of dark music genres, most notably…
Author: Geoffrey Smith
Geoffrey Smith
Bay Area native Geoffrey Smith II has been professionally photographing concerts and events since 2011, with five years each at the Metro News Silicon Valley and SF Weekly newspapers. A recovering goth, Geoffrey likes to shoot dark shows with terrible lighting because they make him sad and frustrated. Geoffrey likes tacos.
Let’s Eat Grandma The Independent November 22, 2022 Photos by Geoffrey Smith II (IG — @concertpotato) Let’s Eat Grandma was a much-needed breath of fresh air in the realm of pop music when they released their debut I, Gemini in 2016. Listening to the album was a strange and enchanting experience, with the duo of Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth blending musical styles as varied as rap, rock, and synthpop with atypical instrumentation and harmonized vocals into something surprisingly cohesive and often catchy. 2018 came, and the release of I’m All Ears gained the band even more fans and…
Fontaines D.C. & Just Mustard The Regency Ballroom May 16, 2022 Photos by Geoffrey Smith II (IG — @concertpotato) Witnessing Fontaines D.C. for the first time was like watching a Paranormal Activity film. Only, instead of jump-scares based on loud noises or spooky imagery, there were lots of sudden and unexpected bursts of energy and intensity. Also, fewer ghosts. I was oblivious to the band’s existence until their recent tour with UK brethren IDLES — arguably a perfect pairing of off-kilter rock that blew up the North American Fontaines fanbase. Skinty Fia is their latest album, and the singles I…
Sleaford Mods Great American Music Hall, San Francisco May 3, 2022 Photos by Geoffrey Smith II Are you looking to become more physically active and need a little inspiration? Then I highly recommend the Sleaford Mods Concert Workout. Join one of their sessions, and you’ll receive nearly an hour and a half of continuous, motivating music accompanied by lyrics that will keep you amused and entertained while also lamenting the ridiculousness of our current society and its pop culture. Turn to instructors Andrew Fearn, who provides the background music and high-energy dance moves, and Jason Williamson, who also provides dance…
Bakar The Fillmore, San Francisco May 2, 2022 Photos by Geoffrey Smith II I didn’t know I needed Grime in my life again until I got a little taste of it while researching Bakar’s music. Covering this show on a bit of a whim, my enthusiasm bumped up a little bit when I found the artist was endorsed by Skepta, basically the poster boy for the grime genre in the UK. And while Bakar’s roots pull from this gritty European hip hop genre, they also pull from indie rock and the rave scene he explored in his youth. And his…
Viagra Boys April 19, 2022 The Independent, San Francisco Photos by Geoffrey Smith II Stockholm’s Viagra Boys are an essential act in what feels like a renaissance of European post-punk bands making their way to the United States. Other acts such as Sleaford Mods, Idles, Yard Act, and Amyl and The Sniffers are doing an amazing job of keeping alive and vibrant what is stereotypically considered a 1980s-era genre, cross-pollinating with collaborations between each other. I almost wrote off the band as edgy or try-hard when I first saw their name. It wasn’t until I dug a little deeper that…
Snapped Ankles The Rickshaw Stop March 25, 2022 All photos by Geoffrey Smith II Snapped Ankles create a sound that is hard to pin down. While they’re often labeled Post-Punk — a genre as varied in sound as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Devo — it fails to prepare the listener. The music of Snapped Ankles is full of familiar elements. You’ll hear primitive synths that could be from Gary Numan’s ‘Down in the Park,’ staccato shouted vocals similar to The B-52s’ Fred Schneider, a ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’-esque descending bassline, and lo-fi trudging sounds like the aliens from…
City Morgue Regency Ballroom October 14, 2021 All photos by Geoff Smith. Trap-metal act City Morgue landed at San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom on Thursday, October 14th on the Hip-Hop oriented leg of the Monster Energy Outbreak Tour. Accompanying them were hardcore punk act Drain and solo rapper Kuttem Reese. City Morgue rappers ZillaKami and SosMula each brought their particular vocal styles and energies to the show, with ZillaKami dishing out some tracks from his solo album Dogboy, including “Not Worth It” and the Nirvana-inspired “Hello.” Taking to the stage at a fast clip, ZillaKami almost immediately launched himself into the…
City Morgue Regency Ballroom October 14, 2021 Buy Tickets Combining metal and hip hop isn’t exactly a new concept — 1993’s “Slam” by rappers Onyx saw a metal remix collab with Biohazard that helped boost its sales, the early 2000s were some of the most successful for nu-metal acts like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, and Florida’s Ghostemane formally released his fresh flavor of trap metal in 2015 with a pair of successful satanically-charged albums. So, what’s next? Enter City Morgue — the duo of New York rappers ZillaKami and SosMula. They made a lot of noise just three years…