Come to Grief and Yatra played O’Brien’s – 6/11

A heavy Saturday night bill in Allston.

Legendary and legendarily miserable Boston sludge band Grief have officially disbanded a couple of times, seemingly for good around 2009, but guitarist Terry Savastano has carried their on misanthropic mantle in recent years with offshoot band Come to Grief. Named for the original band’s ’94 debut, Come to Grief dabble in both old tunes and new, and followed up a string of EPs with their first official full-length back in May.

Last month’s gig served as the When the World Dies release show, and found the band showcasing those new songs along with some old favorites. Grief’s original run is some nightmarish stuff – truly gnarly, hopeless sounding music (in a good way) – and while these new songs let a bit more light in, they maintain a similar spirit of intensity. Both eras sounded totally crushing in the O’Brien’s confines, raging well past midnight and probably alarming patrons of The Draft outside for a smoke break across the street in the process.

I arrived too late to catch the first half of the four-band bill (from a Lake Street Dive show at Roadrunner, which is probably the only time you’ll ever think of that band and Grief in the same sentence), but did arrive in time to catch Maryland’s Yatra. Operating somewhere in the stoner-doom realm as recently as their pair of 2020 LPs, Yatra cranked up the velocity for this year’s Born Into Chaos, released just a day before this show. The thrash-y death metal direction feels like a natural evolution for the trio, and they, too, sounded ferocious.

Scroll down for a gallery of both bands.