(Kyle Doerksen is a very good photographer of varied scenes and subjects, as you can see here. He also has a taste for metal, and that led him to The Regent Theater in Los Angeles last weekend to witness performances by Monolord, Acid King, and Mizmor. We are greateful that he sent us the following report on the show and his accompanying photos.)
I arrived way too early, as I had never taken photos at The Regent and wanted to get the lay of the land. The room is an old theater from 1914 that operated as a high-end film house, a grind house, and then the logical conclusion: an adult movie theater. The theater eventually shuttered in 2000 and reappeared in 2014 in its current form.
A corridor leads you to two sets of double doors that open into the main room, with a bar to the left and right. A flight of steps down to the sloped floor makes for great sightlines but an awkward pit. There is also a fairly sizable upstairs that hosts another bar, a VIP area, and some sort of makeshift bleacher seating.
After a quick loop, I settled in up front and patiently waited for the show to start.
There were some characters in the crowd—a few fired-up older dudes, a man who looked like he could have been one of the security guards at Altamont, and another guy who looked like he had just ridden his bike there from his tech job, before shedding his windbreaker to reveal a Mizmor shirt. Ah yes, the elusive, but not uncommon, black metal nerd. I loved it.
The guy almost immediately started a conversation with a young kid next to him who couldn’t have been more aesthetically different. This kid had chest-length hair and a battle jacket with nothing but patches of bands you only identify by the general shape. They proceeded to talk for 20 minutes about Mizmor, about music, about life. It’s one of my favorite things about the metal scene—it’s a place where two people I’d never expect to interact share this insane passion about a very niche subgenre in an already niche genre.
The house music stopped and the lights dropped.
Mizmor made their way onto the stage, draped in tattered black tank tops. A.L.N., who is the sole creator behind Mizmor, removed his shoes, crept to the mic, and then ripped into some of the hardest and most emotionally vulnerable black metal on the market. A.L.N. has spoken about preferring the “sad” to the “angry” subgenres of metal. That has led to Mizmor’s exploration of a blackened doom, which makes so much sense on paper, but has remained relatively underexplored.
Mizmor cut into the audience as he bleated, “Must I obey the call to live, or can I give way and die?”, a fitting line for a band named after the Hebrew word for “psalm.” Much like King David, Mizmor lyrics are often a cry out to a deity who doesn’t seem to be there. It has been well documented that A.L.N. started the band as he was disentangling himself from Christianity, and although the lyrical themes have shifted over the years, there is a through-line of doubt and depression that permeates every album. That purge of despair is the best way I can describe what Mizmor does. The riffs are dissonant and move from blazing fast to funeral-doom slow, and the vocals vacillate between a goblin rasp and the sound of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
It’s a bit dark.
Yet, a crowd full of Monolord fans stood at full attention as Mizmor offered up something very different than what the majority of fans came to see. Mizmor’s command of the room was palpable, and it was very apparent that this was not an opener to be taken lightly. After moving through the first two pieces, the room felt like it had been swallowed by a black hole, and we were now floating in pure misery. Both “Desert of Absurdity” and “The Narrowing Way” moved at a glacial pace, and A.L.N.’s vocal wizardry was on full display. There is no better- sounding black metal vocalist in the game. Everything is dialed and absolutely perfect—every squeal, intonation, and soul-vomiting sound is executed with intention.
Mizmor eventually let us out of the choke hold, ending the set by thanking Monolord for taking them on tour and taking a selfie with the sold-out audience. The tour had been running for six weeks, and this was the final night. SOLD OUT IN LOS ANGELES.
As drums and amps were carried offstage, a Marshall full stack made its way into place. Acid King was next. There was some shuffling of people as a group of 50- to 60-year-old men made their way to the front, eventually settling in next to a group that looked just like them, but 30 years younger. As the band set up, I had to note the stark contrast between the understated, nearly hunger-strike look of Mizmor and the ’70s-coded, denim-hippie-biker look of Acid King. Bassist Bryce Shelton, with the swagger of 10,000 men; the drummer Jimmy Perez, looking like Fred Armisen doing a Keith Moon impersonation; and the Acid Queen herself, Lori S., adorned in a denim jacket complete with a giant tiger back patch.
Acid King is an interesting band. They have the receipts and legendary status to stand close to other titans in the genre like Sleep and Electric Wizard, but have never quite had the same commercial success. Born out of the Bay Area, Acid King was a staple in the early stoner rock scene in the ’90s, eventually breaking through with Busse Woods (1999).
The band opened their set with “Mind’s Eye” off their newest endeavor, Beyond Vision (2023). This kicked off what would be 45 minutes of some of the grooviest stoner drone I had ever heard. After the first 10 minutes or so, it was very apparent that a sizable contingent of the crowd was there for Acid King, and the older men in the front were properly losing it: “rock on” hand signals were abundant, and many of them looked like they could burst into tears at any moment. Full-on revelry. This fervor seemed to spread through the whole crowd as the riffs kept washing over us—we were grooving.
They ended their evening with the crowd pleasing “Electric Machine,” which brought the whole thing to its apex. The repeating riff seemed to go on forever, increasing in size each time it repeated, fuzzier and fuzzier, heavier and heavier. When they ended their set, Lori graciously signed a setlist for a fan, and the drummer handed out sticks to fans up front. They hardly seemed like an opener on this night.
We regrouped and prepared for Monolord.
The men from Sweden came out looking like what Europeans think Americana is —pearl snap button-ups, cowboy boots, and I’m pretty sure some turquoise jewelry made an appearance. For some bands, I’m not sure this would work, but Monolord owned it. Even the kind of corny “Unfuck Everything” shirt that drummer Esben Willems has been wearing every night of the tour somehow registered as cool.
Monolord unloaded with the opener “Iodine” off their new album, Neverending (2026). A single guitar strummed the understated intro before launching into a huge riff that immediately set the room right. Bassist Mika Häkki was flailing like a madman all over the stage, the drums pulsing and powerful, and guitarist Thomas Jäger’s voice floating nicely on top of everything.
The early part of the set was met with reserved enthusiasm as they played through some of the newer works off the aforementioned Neverending as well as two songs from Your Time to Shine (2021). It wasn’t until the thundering guitars of “Audhumbla” hit that the crowd truly came alive. A small pit broke out and hands started shooting up across the venue, the full-body sway in full effect. This gave way to their biggest crowd-pleaser, “Empress Rising,” a reverb-filled classic that encapsulates what Monolord does so well—giant guitars, driving drums, and a low-end thump that rivals anyone. From this point forward, the audience was all in, and the room felt joyous.
Monolord kept their foot on the gas, with songs off No Comfort (2019) and Rust (2017) before ending their set with the the big and beautiful “Inside a Collider,” proving that doom can still have moments of cloud break, where a little light leaks through.
