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| Greg Puciato of The Black Queen (Photo: Kevin Keating)
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This past Monday night featured the return of
The Black Queen to San Francisco with their headlining show at
Slim's in support of their second album,
Infinite Games (iTunes). Opening for the band was singer/keyboardist,
SRSQ, and punk/metal duo,
Uniform. Unfortunately, I missed The Black Queen's last appearance here in the Bay, so I'd been looking forward to this show for some time now. For those of you unfamiliar with the band, the trio was formed by keyboardist/guitarist, Steven Alexander, a former tech for The Dillinger Escape Plan & Nine Inch Nails, and lead singer, Greg Puciato, former lead singer of The Dillinger Escape Plan. The duo added Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv & Nine Inch Nails for additional synths and production work on both albums. Josh wasn't able to join the tour so in his place was Justin McGrath on keyboards. To learn more about the band, check out our earlier interview with Steven Alexander
here.
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| Greg Puciato of The Black Queen (Photo: Kevin Keating)
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Promptly at 9:45pm, Justin & Steven appeared onstage to the sounds of an atmospheric intro before being joined by Greg and launching into two tracks off their new album: "Thrown Into the Dark" and "No Accusations". Both songs slowly leaning into modern synthwave beats leaving Greg's vulnerable lyrics to hang in the air to the possible surprise for those in the audience expecting a harder vocal onslaught like his days in The Dillinger Escape Plan.
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| Greg Puciato & Steven Alexander of The Black Queen (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
Their third song, "Ice to Never", started to pick up the tempo a bit with Steven's droning guitar providing support to Greg's vocals which overlaid a slight hip-hop beat triggered by Justin's synths. It's a great song and one of my favorites off their first album,
Fever Daydream (iTunes). The next two were a dancy pair also off their first album "Maybe We Should / Non-Consent" and "Distanced" that got the crowd moving. Unfortunately, the slow spot of the evening came with the haunted "Your Move", a track from Infinite Games, that just didn't fit with the flow of evening so far. That said, the rest of the night got back into the groove of the first half with largely up-tempo, dancy tracks from Fever Daydream that showed off Greg's true range as a vocalist.
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| Greg Puciato of The Black Queen (Photo: Kevin Keating)
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Greg took a couple of moments throughout the night to thank the crowd for coming out and "making the jump" over to The Black Queen from the polar opposite sound of The Dillinger Escape Plan, and from my perspective, it's amazing to hear the difference between the two bands. I was never a huge fan of Dillinger, so I'm not familiar with their entire catalog, but of their top tracks, unless you really focus on Greg's tonality, you'd be hard pressed to make the connection that Greg is the same vocalist for both bands.
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| Steven Alexander letting the crowd play his guitar (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
Some of the standouts from the second half of the show included "Secret Scream", "The End Where We Start", and the closing number, "Apocalypse Morning" which had Greg joining Steven on guitar and where the two slowly layered the closing guitar loop that seemed to go on for nearly fifteen minutes as the two paced the stage, showing Justin some attention as he was sequestered behind his synth rack throughout the duration of the show.
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| Justin McGrath of The Black Queen (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
I came into the night with low expectations -- frankly worried about how the electronic sound of their albums would be translated to the live environment -- and I can say that their show absolutely blew me away. The live performance of their material across both albums sounded great and I was so glad I was able to make it to this one! They're wrapping up their Spring tour on Thursday this week in LA, so let's hope they make it back out on the road soon with another stop over in the Bay Area.
You can find the full setlist below. Thanks for reading and be sure to follow us across social at:
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