Rock ‘n’ Roll Fans, Come Worship The Shrine!
“’Psychedelic violence’ is the way we describe our sound, because we’re your dad’s acid records mixed with your older brother’s punk and metal records,” says Josh Landau – the hirsute, badass frontman for headbanging L.A. three-piece the Shrine – as he sits with his equally hirsute and badass bandmates Courtland Murphy and Jeff Murray after playing a sweaty set at Yahoo Music.
Another way to accurately describe the power trio’s sound? Their name was inspired by a vintage poster, from the legendary Los Angeles venue the Shrine Auditorium, advertising a triple-bill of the Who, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. Somehow the Shrine (the group, not the venue) manage to pack the energy of all three classic bands into their own increasingly buzzy – and crazy – live shows, whether they’re playing for an intimate gathering of friends at Yahoo Studios or for “1,200 people crawling on each other and throwing s—“ at their recent party to celebrate their third album, Rare Breed.
“I looked over and a friend of ours was making out with two girls,” recalls Landau of their wild, stuff-of-legend record release bash, which was attended by everyone from Father John Misty to Daniel Lanois to Shepard Fairey.
“It’s like, right here there’s this stripper’s butt in my face, next to my head, and there’s Nik Turner right there, refusing to stop playing saxophone,” laughs Murphy, remembering when the fabled Hawkwind member joined the Shrine onstage for a cover of “Ace of Spades” by Motörhead. “And we just looked at each other like, ‘How the hell did we get here?’”
“There were people slam-dancing with palm trees and s—,” says Murray. “It’s like the party when you were 15 and snuck out of your parents’ house – this is the party that you thought was happening.”
Incidentally, Rare Breed – the first Shrine album “not recorded in a garage by ourselves” – was produced by Dave Jerden, who’s worked with the likes of Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger, Alice in Chains, and Jane’s Addiction. “It was a huge deal for us, because someone who had done way more acid than us wanted to come hang out in our garage,” laughs Landau.
But lest you think these rare-breed rockers don’t have a softer side, in their Yahoo Music interview they tell the tale of much more serious show, when elder statesman of ‘80s French metal Beb – of the super-obscure band Soggy, whose “Waiting for the War” was covered by the Shrine in 2014 – joined the trio onstage in Paris, just three days after last November’s Parisian terrorist attacks.
If you missed both of the amazing concerts mentioned in this article, fear not. Check out the exclusive Yahoo Music performances here, and see why the Shrine are worthy of rock ‘n’ roll worship.
