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Las Vegas gets another music festival: Psycho

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Mudhoney, booked to play Psycho Fest in August.
Photo: Emily Rieman

Add another weekender to Las Vegas' growing assemblage of music festivals: Psycho Las Vegas.

The heavy psych/metal marathon will take place August 26-28 at the Hard Rock Hotel, and according to promoter Thief Events' Instagram page, two of the fest's three stages will be located at the Joint and one of the property's pools. Also officially revealed: 23 participating bands, such as doom metal faves Sleep and Pentagram—both having headlined last year's Psycho, staged in Santa Ana, Calif.—'90s grunge pioneers Mudhoney, Swedish doom giants Candlemass and enduring metal supergroup Down, which features former Pantera/current Superjoint Ritual frontman Phil Anselmo. Other notable acts scheduled to perform include stoner-rock mainstays Fu Manchu, veteran psych/performance art act The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, revived Detroit garage/punk act Death (the subject of the 2012 documentary A Band Called Death) and—arguably the most commercially successful act on the bill—six-decade metal/psych kings Blue Öyster Cult.

And these aren't even the headliners—they'll be announced in the near future, say organizers, along with the rest of the lineup. Last year, nearly 60 bands comprised the Psycho lineup, and this year's edition will reportedly boast more.

The first tier of three-day tickets are already on sale here for $199. An early-bird sale sold out earlier this morning in "two seconds," according to the administrator of the festival's Facebook page. For those traveling to the festival, the code Psych16 gets you 30 percent off a room at the Hard Rock.

Though Psycho can't be summed up by one music genre, its bands generally fall under the heavy rock banner—a Venn Diagram of styles that trace back to the 1960s psychedelic rock movement and early heavy metal, and often include fuzzed up, thick-riffing and downtuned guitars (including bass) and tempos much slower than those usually associated with metal. Locally, the most notable act sharing these musical attributes is doom group Demon Lung, which would be a perfect homegrown addition to the festival.

While it's uncertain if Psycho will become an annual presence in Las Vegas, especially since it took place somewhere else last year, it nonetheless joins Punk Rock Bowling, Las Vegas Death Fest, Further Future and Big Blues Bender on this year's roster of Vegas-hosted niche music festivals.

The lineup so far:

Sleep

Candlemass

Blue Öyster Cult

Down

Mudhoney

Yob

Pentagram

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown

Fu Manchu

Death (Detroit)

Colour Haze

Acid King

Belzebong

Øresund Space Collective

A Storm of Light

Danava

Bongripper

Mars Red Sky

Golden Void

Jucifer

The Cosmic Dead

Truth and Janey

Cave of Swimmers

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