Kal-El, Goya, Black Moon Cult
DNA Lounge
San Francisco, CA
September 29, 2026
I hadn’t seen a show at the DNA Lounge in 4 months, a long time for a club that took the top place for number of metal shows in 2025. But this summer the metal shows just kinda dried up, unless you count a deathcore show and nu metal dance club nights (which I don’t, sorry).
So I was kind of excited to see a night of doom metal / stoner rock upstairs at the DNA. The headliner was the Norwegian space rock / stoner metal band Kal-El, who I’ve been listening to quite a lot since first checking out their bandcamp a few weeks ago.
The evening started out with Black Moon Cult, a heavy psychedelic rock band from Toledo, Ohio. Aside from having a name that sounds like it was generated by one of those Internet naming things (pick 1 from each column and that’s your stoner metal name, black witch bong cult moon fire devil zilla, etc.), they sounded pretty good. Unfortunately we only caught their last song, so didn’t get a ton of feel for their music, but the guitarist had serious chops for sure.
Goya from Phoenix, Arizona was up second. They had some decent songs I enjoyed, but a couple newer songs were kinda middle of the road. And there were politics in between songs I could have done without in my stoner metal, seems like an odd mix and really was.a downer.
I know I should shut up but I don’t need some Arizona liberals (is that a thing?) telling me about the Middle East in between songs about weed. I had made a pot of Goya black beans earlier in the day though, so wanted to really love them like I love beans (no relation tho).
The band most of the small-ish Tuesday night crowd was there to see, Kal-El, put on a pretty great show. All the way from Norway to play the DNA (or Krypton, Kal-El is Superman’s real name I am told by my comic book / superhero fan brethren).
They were a 5 piece band, not how I pictured them after listening to their albums for some reason. The singer has a rather unique voice, like a higher, nasally Ozzy at times. Kal-El delivered cosmic space rock with lotsa fuzz, heavy bass and some metal riffs.
Their set was almost entirely (except for 1 or 2 songs) from the most recent 2 records that I bought off of Bandcamp and thus knew (Astral Voyager Vol. 1 and 2), most excellent. I hope they come through the West Coast again.
–Hectic
