Yautja, Chepang played O’Brien’s Pub – 12/17

The first night of O’Brien’s annual High Holidays heavy music celebration went down the Friday before Christmas with sets from Yautja, Chepang, Gog and Severed Boy.

I didn’t plan on my last weekend of live music (or public activity in general, really) for the year coming quite as early as it did, but I am glad that I kicked it off with a stacked, super-heavy bill at OB’s. High Holidays (the sister event to the summerly Grub, Sweat and Beers barbecue) welcomed a full house of local metalheads for a night split between touring acts and Boston’s own.

Severed Boy, a new project from Nicholas Wolf and Reid Calkin (both of Leopard Print Taser, among others), opened the night with an impressive death-doom thrashing. Two-piece metal bands that still sound heavy as an anvil are always a win in my book, and this one certainly fit that bill. Gog, who I also caught opening for Imperial Triumphant back in October, impressed once again.

As far as the out-of-towners on the bill, Nepalese grindcore crew Chepang were actually also in town pretty recently, opening up for the Aaron Turner-fronted sludge supergroup Old Man Gloom at The Sinclair last month. I had some idea of what I was in for based on that brief and blistering set, but with an alternate double-drummer lineup in the much closer confines of O’Brien’s, they were even more brain-melting this time around. A furious onslaught in and out in well under 20 minutes, just as the grind gods intended.

Nashville’s unconventional, genre-blurring trio Yautja, who released the excellent The Lurch this year, headlined the night. I’d last seen them with Inter Arma at TT’s almost 7 years ago and probably didn’t fully appreciate their dissonant, destabilizing groove at the time, but I’m glad to have evolved in my thinking since then. Their short but mesmerizing set was a heavy highlight of the end of the year.

Check out a gallery of all four bands below.