Hashtronaut/Earthlore Live 4/09/25
Live at The Middle East (Upstairs) in Cambridge, Massachusetts USA *April 9th 2025*
This is another last minute show that I decided to attend. Being on a Wednesday night and having to work the next morning, it’s always a tough decision to go. However, I really wanted to see the band Hashtronaut, from Denver, Colorado and this was my best opportunity. The headlining band was Worshipper from Boston. Unfortunately, I had to leave before their set in order to manage about three and a half hours of sleep before work. Worshipper are a solid rocking band and I have seen them on a couple of occasions before. The hour plus drive to the Middle East Club proved to be worth it though, the show was only $15 and I got to see two excellent bands play.
EARTHLORE
Earthlore was the opening band, who are from the Marblehead, Massachusetts area. The quartet play a blend of stoner and doom style of metal, with some heavy psych mixed in. The band promply went on at 8:00pm, and played a solid twenty minute set. They sounded great! The guitarist/ vocalist Drew, with whom I met when I first got to the club, was very cool. I wasn’t familiar with Earthlore at all but they were heavy and tight. The other guitarist played most of the leads and the bassist and drummer locked in good and were a solid rhythm section. Drew’s voice was a mix of clean and aggressive and it worked well with the heavy chugging rhythms of the songs. Most of the tracks were in the four to six minute range. I enjoyed their set and will be seeing the band play next Friday at the Hopsmokerfest in Braintree, Mass.
HASHTRONAUT
I was pretty psyched to hear Hashtronaut play live. Their Blues Funeral Recordings debut album, No Return (review here) was released just over a year ago, and it kills! I was curious to see if the band could pull off their ultra thick and heavily swampy doom sound live. The first thing I noticed is that the band added a second guitarist to their lineup. This created a totally immersive wall of crushing fuzz. Hashtronaut opened up their set with the first song on No Return, called “Rip Wizard”. I couldn’t believe how dense and heavy their sound was! I was in the very front of the stage and I had to put my earplugs in after “Rip Wizard”. The guitars were at an absolute mammoth volume of shear intensity. Daniel Smith’s bass sound was ripping through my chest along with drummer Garcia’s pounding percussion. The band sounded fantastic and delivered a heaping dose of ear bleeding riffs! They played the samples from the album before the songs and completely leveled the place! I remember the clean guitars of “Dead Cloud” starting and then the band exploding into a bulldozing dirge of devastation! I recognized a few other tracks from No Return, like the second song “Cough It Up”. It completely slayed and they absolutely destroyed! They also played a brand new song to close out their brutal forty minute set. The energy that Hashtronaut displayed was also incredible and matched the potency and ferocity of their head ripping performance. I was very impressed and happy that I decided to go to this show. After the set, I bought a t-shirt and thanked the band for coming. They completely annihilated and it was an amazing experience to witness.
