THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
Doom on the Patio, May 1

It sure was nice being back out at the Patio for a show again, really one of the best, most underrated places downtown to experience live music. Even better was seeing Doom on the Patio, a great themed riff (see what I did there?) on Marshal Rones’ Best of Orlando award-winning Punk on the Patio live series featuring heavy, heavy grooves, man.
POTP has always been flexible about its concept, seldom sticking to just punk. And this chapter wasn’t all by-the-numbers doom. But most typifying the night’s motif was Electric Dawn, an Orlando trio steeped in the tradition.
With all the stoner fantasy oozing from their prog tendencies, their name just begs to be elaborately sketched on a teenage hesher’s notebook. I mean, look, their latest album (Locus of Chiron), according to their Band of the Week profile with us, is a “sci-fi concept album set in the year 2060.” No doubt, they’re true believers, and they’ve gotten better since I last saw them. So get blazed and turn it up.
On paper and on record, local band Royal Graves (f.k.a. Black Sun Mountain Cult) are a promising band. In their posted recordings, they take the heft of doom metal and refract it through a modern prism toward some very forward horizons that suggest the widescreen scope of post-metal bands like Red Sparowes and Russian Circles.
Clearly, they’re driven by lots of good ingredients and ambition. But this performance lacked the seasoning and defining recipe of their recordings, really only working when they kept it simple. Still, considering what they’ve demonstrated on their Bandcamp page, it’s worth watching to see if they’ll soon crystallize on stage.
Besides being the least doom-based band of the night, Cocoa Beach trio Fighting the Silence were also the biggest surprise. Their big guitar-driven alt-rock is dynamic and dimensional, shifting gears often and even employing samples to good effect. From writhing rock burners to heaven-grazing post-rock, their effects-powered sound is a wiry interplay of vigor, drama and tension.
All told, the special edition Doom on the Patio was a fresh twist on Punk on the Patio and suggests some interesting, and potentially limitless, new possibilities to keep the concert series evergreen.
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Email Bao: baolehuu@orlandoweekly.com