On Saturday, October 11, Empire Live shook like it was trying to break free from its own foundation. A four-band bill, led by Mushroomhead, built for beautiful disorder. No openers. No headliners. Just waves of sound, each one crashing harder than the last.
The first hit came from Denver band Mind Incision, a freight train that didn’t slow down long enough to ask if you were ready. The lights dropped, and the first riff landed like a steel beam.
Guitars screamed, drums hit like blunt-force objects, and the vocals tore through the haze like someone clawing their way out of hell. This wasn’t a warm-up. It was a trauma response.
Their song “Aneurysm of a Narcissist” scraped ego against bone and left no polish behind. It was unfiltered voltage, the kind that rattles your ribs and burns the air. They don’t play songs; they hurl them. Every note landed like shrapnel. The intensity wasn’t for show. It was survival. When they finished, the crowd exhaled like they’d just run through fire.
Then came Black Satellite, New York’s answer to everything the modern rock scene forgot it needed. They walked onstage looking like the storm of emotions that follows a bad dream. Larissa Vale moved like a fuse about to catch, her voice cutting through a retro style bullet mic, sharp, commanding, magnetic. The crowd fed off every line. It wasn’t just power; it was presence.
Their sound lives somewhere between apocalypse and seduction, sleek but volatile. “Kill for You” pulled everyone into its gravity. That track is built for a bigger stage, no questions. By the time they closed with a cover of Rammstein’s “Sonne,” the place went off.
Phones out, heads banging, half the room shouting German lyrics they only half-knew. It didn’t matter. They were in full command, running hot and merciless. Albany has no idea how lucky it is they still play rooms this size. They’re built for arenas. The sound, the look, the confidence, all weaponized. When they left, the room buzzed like a live wire.
And then, Psychostick. Not sure where that name stems from. There was nothing “psycho” about this band, more like “Psycho-shtick.” Their brand of humor-core landed somewhere between System of a Down, Weird Al, and a clearance-sale Tenacious D. They’ve got fans, and they showed up ready to laugh and thrash. Credit where it’s due, they know how to entertain. But they were a strange fit for this lineup.
It wasn’t that they were bad, just misplaced. Their set would’ve killed on a festival side stage or post-show afterparty. Here, wedged between darker, heavier acts, it broke the spell. It joined the ranks of those famously mismatched tours of the past: Hendrix opening for The Monkees, The Ramones for Toto, Kool & the Gang for Van Halen, Blink-182 with Lil Wayne. You respect the audacity, but the chemistry just isn’t there.
When Mushroomhead finally took the stage to the SpongeBob SquarePants theme, everything before it evaporated and the room tightened. Masked figures emerged through smoke and strobe, silhouettes of menace and theater. The roar that followed wasn’t applause; it was a battle cry.
They didn’t play songs; they unleashed them. Water drums exploded, spraying weather across the stage. The percussion hit so hard you could feel it in your chest cavity. Every member moved like a limb of one monstrous organism, driven by hive-mind rhythm.
The photo pit felt like fighting for a spot in Shamu’s splash zone, if Shamu had been delivered from evil. Cameras got wet, hearts raced, and there was no looking away. Masks, motion, and music collided in a visual ritual. The crowd was transfixed, devouring every snarl, every flash of light.
“Fall in Line” came early and set the tone. “Sun Doesn’t Rise” tore through the set like a war cry from another time. Thirty years in and this band hasn’t lost a drop of venom.
When Jackie LaPonza stepped from the shadows and walked across the crowd, it was a new level. Her voice, haunting yet razor-sharp, cut through the sludge and gave everything a ghostly shimmer.
The encore was a knockout: “Empty Spaces” / “Born of Desire” / “War Pigs.” That War Pigs tease wasn’t a cover; it was a salute to the mighty Ozzy Osbourne.
The thing about Mushroomhead is they don’t just play heavy, they embody it. Everything is deliberate, even the madness. The masks, the water, the revolving lineup, it’s all part of the mythology now. They’ve survived label wars, lineup fractures, and decades of reinvention. You don’t last this long by luck. You endure because you’ve turned pain into performance, and rhythm into ritual.
Every moment of their set met at the intersections of aggression and art. Percussionists swapped spots, vocalists walked the crowd, and the lights pulsed like a heartbeat on the verge of collapse. They’ve harnessed sensory overload into a controlled turbulence that never quite crashes. That tension is the magic.
When the lights finally fell, the room was drenched in disbelief. People blinked at each other like they’d witnessed something that shouldn’t exist outside of nightmares.
If you came looking for a normal night of metal, you got baptized in something else entirely. Mushroomhead turned Empire Live into a cathedral of sight and sound, making everyone inside a disciple for the night. It took three bands to build an altar and only one to burn it all down.
Stepping into the crisp Albany night felt like surfacing for air. The contrast hit hard; the world outside was still and almost too clean. Shirts clung to bodies, ears rang, and camera lenses carried the splatter marks of the water drums like burn scars. Mushroomhead didn’t just end the night—they unleashed it, leaving Albany lit up and humming.
Setlist: Eye To Eye, A Requiem For Tomorrow, Fall In Line, Our Apologies, Qwerty, Sun Doesn’t Rise, Solitaire/Unraveling, The Heresy, Madness Within, Seen It All, Prepackaged, When Doves Cry/Among The Crows, 12 Hundred, Empty Spaces/Born Of Desire/War Pigs
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