Xoth, Frolic, Dungeon Crawl, Wartroll
- Hectic
- Apr 18
- 4 min read
April 17, 2025
Thee Parkside
San Francisco, CA
There were two things that occupied my time in the early 1980s (besides middle school) – heavy metal and Dungeons & Dragons. I even combined the two constantly, listening to Accept’s Balls to the Wall or Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind to psych me and my friends up during D&D campaigns. Neither D&D nor metal was considered very cool at the time, in fact some people thought that both were tools of the devil.
Eventually in high school I left D&D behind, though I never lost my love for heavy metal (see: this website). It might have had something to do with a girl finally talking to me, or adding punk rock and hardcore to my non-stop metal playlist. But I still loved the intersection of D&D themes and heavy metal all these decades, from all the fantasy imagery in Dio’s solo stuff to my personal favorite Orc army fight songs from more recent bands like Unleashed and 3 Inches of Blood.
So it has been interesting to see a new crop of bands not just use Dungeons & Dragons / fantasy as their subject matter, but even dress the part. I’ve never been much of one for bands with “gimmicks,” and I assumed that is what this trend was (Goblin masks? Get real). But after seeing a couple of them this evening at Thee Parkside I may be a convert.
Consisting of two trolls and 3 masked humans (?), WarTroll got the crowd going. Their brand of troll drinking and feasting themed death metal was heavy and driving at times, and occasionally an epic adventure. The vocalist / guitarist front troll put out some evil vibe energy, when his nose wasn’t knocking into the mike. But the keyboards were a bit too constant and high in the mix for me, maybe something I'm just not used to in my metal. Regardless they were an entertaining opener, and certainly worth seeing live.
Dungeon Crawl took things up a notch musically and speed wise, with their brand of “Hooded robe thrash.” Well, three of them wore large hooded cloaks D&D style, one of the guitarists opted for just some leather armbands and vest. Perhaps he had the best hair in the group, or maybe he was Aragorn? Either way, a wise choice given the “ventilation” in Thee Parkside – it gets warm in there quickly with a crowd. There was even a guy in the crowd wearing a heavy cloak, who I assumed was in one of the bands, but later it turned out he was just to be really into it.
Anyway, Dungeon Crawl’s set was great, quite a good band regardless of the costumes, and they even had a song about Gelationous Cubes swallowing you whole, which really gets a D&D nerd going. It sounded like they had some backing symphonic tracks at times, but no keyboard player on stage. Unfortunately their set seemed to be limited to 25 minutes due to the schedule always being behind at Thee Parkside (punk rock time for a punk rock club). That was somewhat disappointing as I could have used another song or two, great band.
Local metal scene heroes Frolic came on third, delivering their high energy blend of death, thrash and even classic metal. As I’ve written elsewhere on this site, I always try to make it to gigs with Frolic on the bill, both to support and because they are always good live. Though they are playing quite a few shows these days, it's tough to catch all of them.
The club did get slightly less crowded after Dungeon Crawl finished, so either there were a bunch of D&D fans who are not real metal fans (Poseurs Only, as Frolic drummer Elijah would term it), or this old fuck whose ramblings you are now reading was able to stay out later than a bunch of 20-30 somethings on a Thursday night. Maybe some folks could not deal with the pure metal intensity without any costumes that is Frolic (though they do have some sci-fi themed songs). They finished with the title track of their full-length album Fusion of Spirits, always a crowd pleaser.
Headlining the show was Xoth, from Seattle, Washington, who were about halfway through a Western US & Canada tour. They had a sound that was a fairly unique, some technical death metal aspects, some high intensity classic metal influences, and the bass player played slap bass most of the time, something I haven’t seen in a metal band recently. No costumes, but a lot of sci-fi themed space opera songs - I picked up their most recent album Exogalactic after the show. Xoth were intense and melodic at the same time, a fantastic live band. Unfortunately they too were reduced to a short set, having the club shut things down at 12:45 AM, just as they were about to launch into their final song.
I’m not sure if the fault lay with the promoter or the club, but starting a 4 band metal show at 9:30 PM just doesn’t really work math wise. You’d think a bunch of Dungeons & Dragons dudes with their 20 sided dice could figure that out! A great evening of metal and fantasy regardless.
–Hectic
