Blues for the Red Sun

Kyuss Lives! represents the worst kind of reunion - a sad combination of nostalgia and desperation, a fact heightened by the absence of co-founding guitarist Josh Homme, who not only pioneered Kyuss’ scorched groove but wrote the majority of the material. And yet, somehow at Stubb’s on Saturday, Kyuss Lives! rose above.

Kyuss once made stoner metal the way Breaking Bad’s Walter White cooks meth: in the desert and to perfection. Alongside Sleep and the Melvins, the band rounded out the trinity of 1990s heaviness, cutting two seminal albums – 1992’s Blues for the Red Sun and 1994’s Welcome to Sky Valley – that were as much a counter to the grunge movement in Seattle as a continuation of the Doors' heathen psychedelia. While undoubtedly influential, Kyuss has been regulated in the broader scheme to a mere footnote in the career of Homme, who added muscular sex appeal and re-branded the result Queens of the Stone Age.

Bassist Nick Oliveri got the boot from QOTSA before 2004’s Lullabies to Paralyze for domestic battery issues, as Homme remarked at a Waterloo Records in-store, and has had a rap sheet far more interesting than his music ever since. At that point, Kyuss vocalist John Garcia hadn’t been heard from in close to a decade, a time it looks like he spent working as a strip club bouncer. The partial reunion announced last year seemed merely a cash-in opportunity.

Yet, Garcia, Oliveri, and original drummer Brant Bjork were in fine form on Saturday night, locking into voltaic opener “Gardenia” with the verve of a band that obviously had something to prove – not unlike the Stone Temple Pilots’ recent storming of Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater - while stand-in Bruno Fevery adequately aped Homme’s fuzz-bomb guitar. Between early scorcher “Thumb” and encore closer “Green Machine,” it was as if the bong water hadn’t been rinsed since 1994.

The only time the band actually lacked spark in the 80-minute set was during the extended, lagging jams, at which point the power trio couldn’t hold a zippo to Austin’s improv lightning rod, Tia Carrera (see photo credit).

Call it Homme-lessness

Set List: “Gardenia”
“Hurricane”
“One Inch Man”
“Thumb”
“Freedom Run”
“Asteroid”
“Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop”
“Conan Troutman”
“Fatso Forgotso”
“Odyssey”
“Whitewater”
“El Rodeo”
“100°”
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“Spaceship Landing”
“Alien’s Wrench”
“Green Machine”