Dude! Priestess and Mastodon at Cat's Cradle

The best pics I got all night were of Mastodon, but my videos are of Priestess. That's just the way it turned out.

Jess and I went to the Cradle mainly to check out Priestess, a great hard-rock band from Montreal. I really hesitate to call them metal, though they can be very heavy. In a lot of ways, they remind me of a very heavy Cheap Trick. I also hear a lot of Deep Purple in their music, and one of their songs, "Blood", even reminds me of The Strokes. We got there a little late (just after 9 pm), and they were already playing "Lay Down," which is one of my favorite songs. I'm a bit peeved over that because the tickets clearly stated that doors would open at 8, and the show would begin at 9. But another band played before Priestess, and unless they managed to play their set, the club switch out the stage set up, and Priestess play two songs all in the space of about 15 minutes, then that clearly wasn't correct.


Mastodon was the headliner, and I can say they are the most appropriately named band in the world. Like their namesake, they are frightfully heavy. Big, stomping, loud, mean and ugly. They are also rather monotonous, and so, after about an hour of hearing what sounded like the same big, stomping, loud, mean and ugly riff over and over again, we took off.

I coined the phrase "dude rock" to describe them, which prompted a discussion in the car about what "dude rock" is, and which bands are and aren't "dude rock." (on a side note, Jess also coined the phrase "gnome beard" to describe the long, pointed facial hair lots of dudes at the show were sporting.) We decided that in order for a band to be dude rock, there can't be anyone cute in the band, and there must be nothing sexy about the music. I thought that Queens of the Stone Age are dude rock, but since Jess thinks Josh Homme is hot, she didn't quite agree. But I think stoner rock -- like prog rock -- could be considered a sub-genre of dude rock. She thought that Pink Floyd was the ultimate dude rock band, but since I think David Gilmour (back in the day) is hot, we disagreed again. However, we both agreed that Rush is dude rock.

Here are some other bands and our opinions on whether or not they're dude rock:

Led Zeppelin -- not dude rock
Slayer -- dude rock
Rolling Stones -- not dude rock
Motorhead -- DUDE ROCK (this prompted a new discussion of whether or not either of us would sleep with Lemmy for $1 million. I won't tell you our answers, but Jess did ask if part of the proceeds could go to cut off Lemmy's facial moles.)
all hair metal -- not dude rock, though I know plenty of dudes who love them some Cinderella
all hardcore -- totally dude rock



Anyway, check out the videos of Priestess.

(videos removed)