Concert Review: Perro Bravo with LAW

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By: Juan Barragan
Perro Bravo with LAW
HOB San Diego
24 August 2013

Perro Bravo and LAW were special guests for the SRH Fest presented by 91X at the House of Blues this past Saturday. These two bands have been sharing the stage more often recently. That evening, LAW gave the crowd an almost acoustic performance since their drummer, Nick Aguilar, could not make it to the show.

LAW opened up with a Queens of the Stone Age cover, “Go With the Flow,” and played original material for the rest of their set. They finished their set with “Getting By.” Members in the audience, without even knowing who this band was, compared the vocalist’s singing style with that of Sublime. Little did they know that they were actually witnessing the late Sublime frontman’s son, Jakob Nowell.

Perro Bravo took the stage next and played a lot of faster paced songs to go with the theme of the night, punk rock music. Not all their songs were fast, however. The band played their extremely catchy tune, “Electrified.” This is where Perro Bravo set the mood for the rest of the night, with the chorus which says, “Electrify the night / the vibes are feeling right / and we’ve got to take a hold of them,” and that was exactly what the audience did as they danced along. This song showcased the band’s talent in the rhythm section with a groovy bass line from Mike Long and drum beats from Mudd Lowther. The frontman, Michael “Miguel” Happoldt, showed us his own talent as he executed a couple of guitar solos before he followed with his singing on the verses with his on-stage Space Echo Pedal that he manually controls throughout the song. Perro Bravo followed with “Livin’ in time,” which served as a prequel for the remaining acts of the night. The covers for the night would come later on in Perro Bravo’s set. The band decided to play the Long Beach Dub Allstars hit, “Rosarito,” which Happoldt was a part of at one point in his musical career. Perro Bravo ended their set with a Bad Religion cover, “We’re Only Gonna Die (From Our Own Arrogance),” which was a song that Sublime would cover as well.

Perro Bravo threw a bunch of unofficially released albums at the crowd for their further enjoyment. The album is called, Smoking Scorpion Tails, and can likely be acquired for free by going to a future Perro Bravo show. Hopefully the band decides to release more material in this format soon, since the crowds always seem to enjoy the music that they play.