Live music review: Levitation 2025 ramble with Pavement, Mastodon, The Black Angels and more

Levitation Festival 2025 took place September 26 – 28  and marked another successful installment in a new location, with more than 30 acts making their way to Austin for yet another Black Angels-sponsored party featuring talent from all over the world. With a new HQ at Palmer Events Center on Barton Springs Road, the convention center turned into Levitation’s psychedelic playground for three days over the last weekend. Each day of the event brought unique vibes that spanned the festival’s usual suspects, first-timers, and legacy acts, all of which helped bring the star-studded booked talent to life for the three-day, two-stage rager. The Cosmic Clash team made their way to the convention center for the weekend to capture the action and highlight every moment that stood out to us at Palmer.

Friday

The first day at Palmer centered on the heaviest music the festival had planned, featuring talent that ranged from bone-crushing heavy riffs to technical death metal mayhem. The venue featured two stages, one main stage inside the convention center room and a smaller one outside on the building’s green space. Brooklyn world-builders Castle Rat made their mark in the big room with medieval costumes and imagery, enlisting early arriving fest-goers into their army with riffs that harnessed the power of a thousand suns. Onstage sword fighting and other mythical activities ensued, all while the deftly performed music itself made an adventurous case for the ascending New York City outfit as they continue to ride the touring circuit in support of their latest LP The Bestiary. 

Austin-Glasgow husband-and-wife duo SKLOSS took over on the outdoor stage without delay after Castle Rat kicked the weekend off inside, bringing a searing blend of shoegaze and space rock. Drummer Karen Skloss performs most of the vocal duties, while guitarist Sandy Carson handles guitar duties that include an array of mesmerizing effects. An approach the likes of Oliver Ackermann (A Place to Bury Strangers) would find sonic solace. Skloss was recently signed to Fuzz Club Records and put out their debut album, The Pattern Speaks on the respected imprint in March of this year. 

Ever-evolving Denver technical death metal titans Blood Incantation took their places on the convention center stage next, still feeling the massive success of their 2024 full-length Absolute Elsewhere. The shredability in the five-pierce touring vehicle manifests each recorded sound on the acclaimed effort, fusing the eras of extreme metal, progressive metal, with roots in progressive rock. For Blood Incantation, the tempos can switch on a dime, and the rhythms can fall apart at a moment’s notice before merging back together again in seamless fashion. The brutality would temporarily pause for a few bars for some 70s prog-laden synths, before collapsing into a vortex of blast beats and mind-boggling riffs that could disorient even the most initiated metal fan. 

Detroit’s identity-less post-hardcore collective The Armed performed as the day hit dusk on Friday, a proving ground that turned out to have a loyal following as spectators appeared to lose their shit in a raucous manner once the circle pit-inducing cuts began to hit. The Armed are touring in support of their latest record which dropped in August, THE FUTURE IS HERE AND EVERYTHING NEDDS TO BE DESTROYED. The group head to Europe in January for a slate of performances. The full list of tour dates can be found at the band’s website.

The evening wrapped up with a fired-up Mastodon, who mainly played it safe and stuck to the hits and crowd favorites for their 80-minute slot. While the absence of Brent Hinds (RIP) is noticeable, Mastodon covered their bases with all the brute force in remembrance of the departed founding member. It was the group’s first performance in the wake of Hinds’ death. Canadian guitarist Nick Johnson filled in admirably for Mastodon’s fallen member. 

Saturday

The Los Angeles-based Hooveriii is a usual suspect in the world of Levitation. But, with an output so prolific that the Bert Hoover company has been making waves with a gauntlet of studio records and live albums that deal in walls of fuzz and other cosmic effects to assist with their no-holds-barred approach to the music. The dialed-in Hoover players left the early-comer crowd at Palmer primed for the stage-rattling whirlwind in store for the second day of Levitation festivities. Hooveriii also released their sixth studio album Manhunter in 2025, continuing a fierce trajectory that can’t be stopped.

Asheville’s Wednesday took the main stage next for their return to the Austin area after a two-year absence. Since the release of 2023’s Rat Saw God, the Southern roots combined with shoegazing scream therapy has taken its full realization as the ubiquitous ensemble has navigated critical and touring success. Their development takes an even greater capacity on 2025’s Bleeds, a continuation of refining their sound and playing to their strengths to further bandleader Karly Hartzman’s unabated upswing to indie rock royalty. Catch Wednesday member, MJ Lenderman this weekend at ACL Festival.

Boston to Brooklyn post punk rising stars Model/Actriz played an early afternoon set on the outdoor stage, an occasion that spurred an ecstatic, yet still chaotic, onrush. With the release of their sophomore LP Pirouette, the New York-based outfit took the dance element of their noisy delivery even further. Now lacing their dark aura with danceable beats by way of warped drum cymbals and guitar pick scratches, the unbridled experimentation from the group has proved to be refined down to a science. 

San Francisco neo-psychedelia elder statesmen The Brian Jonestown Massacre arrived for their early-evening set ready to rock, with eccentric frontman Anton Newcombe appearing to be on his best behavior. There were no fights, drunken rants, or any visible dysfunction to be found, a rare occurrence if you know the lore about their volatile bandleader. The performance was flawless which was a special treat for longtime BJM fans. Tambourine man Joel Gion is still all-around cool, keeping time with his signature jingle jangle that has become a core element of The Brian Jonestown way. All fans of Gion and his band should read his new memoir In The Jingle Jangle Jungle. 

New Zealand to Portland, Oregon genre blenders Unknown Mortal Orchestra took the semi-headlining spot, a worthy position for one of Levitation’s frequent flyers. Singer, guitarist, and main creative mastermind Ruban Nielson is known for combining dream pop and psychedelia with a touch of soul and funk. The result is song selections that build atmospheric tension in a bliss-filled soundscape before erupting into an engaging instrumental jam that showcases the best of the Nielson touring outfit. Having recently released a solid EP Curse to follow up the success of UMO’s fifth studio outing V, the songs keep coming from the Oregon-based touring machines at a rate that keeps the well-oiled machine rolling.

Sunday

The last day of the Levitation invasion kicked off with hometown heroes Daiistar, who have been on a touring streak since the release of their 2023 debut Good Time. Helmed by singer and guitarist Alex Capistran, the songwriter has been making noise in the Austin music scene with other projects like Austin psych outfit Wurve long before forming the now-signed to Fuzz Club and established local favorite. Instead of taking a stripped-down psych revival approach, Capistran now dabbles in the worlds of noise pop and shoegaze. Think a combination of Jesus And The Mary Chain with the attitude of Stone Roses. A welcome surprise from the opening set came with a series of new tracks, possibly to be included on a future sophomore full-length release.

The loudest band from New York City A Place To Bury Strangers arrived at Levitation once again with their usual mission statement: Mass Chaos. Taking the reins in absolute darkness, the noisegaze trio took their stations and unleashed their unique brand of visceral, deafening sensory deprivation. A festival highlight arrived as the expected moment in Strangers’ live shows where the Oliver Ackermann noisemakers depart the stage and play in the center of the crowd, giving a fingertips distance from spectators to immerse themselves in the blaring spectacle. Ackermann founded a guitar effects pedal brand called Death By Audio, if that gives you any idea of his level of commitment to making noisy music. 

Long Beach, California synth-psych punk rockers Frankie And The Witch Fingers are no strangers to the Austin scene, giving local fans a real-time display of their rapid evolution and meteoric rise to underground fame. Since cementing their current lineup, Singer and guitarist Dylan Sizemore has championed his pack all over the world on countless tours that take short breaks in between before recording new music and starting the release cycle all over again.

Their Levitation set on the main Palmer stage felt like a high point for a band that’s been fighting it out in the trenches across numerous releases and tours that pack the better part of each year. In fact, the Frankie quintet rocked so hard that the venue’s sound system appeared to blow out towards the end of their allotted time. Yeah, it was that good. Listen to their new album, Trash Classic, which pushes the envelope further with their synth-driven, psychedelic punk attack. 

Levitation’s fearless founders, The Black Angels, appeared for a Sunday special, ready to follow all the acts that brought their best to Levitation 2025. Despite some slight technical hiccups in the guitar department, the Angels pushed through their set with their usual wall-of-sound intensity, keeping their darkness-fueled brand of psychedelic revivalism intact. Aside from debut album Passover dominating the set, the Alex Maas-fronted cast unveiled a sample of unreleased material, hopefully hinting at a new release on the horizon. 

A double dose of ’90s rock legacy came in the form of Built to Spill and Pavement. Built to Spill demonstrated expertise in resourcefulness, leveraging the polymathic skills of founder and sole original member Doug Martsch, who projects a multitude of different sounds using his guitar and a minimalist effects rig. Plenty of sing-alongs ensued through the hour stretch, with some touches of nostalgia resonating over the crowd to the songs they could’ve downloaded off Limewire back in the day. With a rich history that dates back to 1992, the Boise trio catered to both loyalists and casual fans alike. We caught most of “The Plan” from seminal 1999 record, Keep It Like a Secret up close as you can see from the video above.

Stockton, California legends Pavement greeted the crowd with a brief “We’re the Pavement band” before slinging a sprawling 90-minute set of 24 songs of both fan-favorites and deep cuts. With some banter existing in the form of activism against the current genocide in Palestine, the Stephen Malkmus-led legends assured the audience that they were right there with them as one of the defining forces in the world of independent music. For a set that was all about summarizing their career in a given festival headline performance, the “Pavement Band” left the Levitation attendees in awe to send off their weekend of buzzing amplifiers and all-around great times. Same time and place next year? 

Levitation will host Halloween Freakend, a  weekend festival at the Far Out Lounge and Stage on October 31 and November 1, featuring Viagra Boys, Stereolab, and Machine Girl as featured headliners. Austin Psych Fest will also return in the Spring at Far Out on May 6 – May 8, 2026. All details can be found via the Levitation website.

Featured photo of The Black Angels by Troy Gonzales