Kavana plays an empty room like a full house

“It doesn’t matter,” says a guy I’ll call Drunk Boda after I inform him that I didn’t play at tonight’s Metal Monday show at Navajo Live in San Carlos. The crowd was sparse, but that’s okay: when the musicians take up most of the space in a venue — either on stage or waiting for their turn to get there — it means there’s a better chance of striking up a conversation.

Promoter Emily Bartell tells me that Metal Mondays brought a good crowd in, back when the Covid orders were first lifted. Then it declined — unless it’s an ‘80s tribute band, which brings people out in droves. I check out Blackcast long enough to confirm that they are a long way from the ‘80s, then resume my role in a modern day remake of the cult classic documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

The boisterous antics of men dressed in Zebra print outfits from that film have been replaced here by a group of men in their late teens and early twenties in metal T-shirts who make up the group Kavana, tonight’s so-called headliners. It’s a 10:30 shit slot for an unknown band that all but guarantees the audience will have dispersed in order to get up early for work on Tuesday.

They’d like to be in the club, supporting the other groups, perhaps having a beer. But none of them are old enough to drink, and so they are relegated to standing around outside until showtime. Still, they make the best of their group hang in the parking lot. One band member’s mother, who will henceforth be known as Metal Mom, takes advantage of being old enough to drink and goes to the bar, leaving the band and its merch guy outside. (The reason for the code name is that she has called out of work tomorrow so she can see her son’s debut — he’s been with the band for all of two weeks.

I conduct video interviews with Kavana, starting with bassist Josh Phillipi. He’s reluctant to have the interview posted and says I should do an interview with the entire band. I tell him he should let me do my job, but given that my job, as I saw it, was asking him if a groupie ever mistakenly slept with him because she thought he played guitar, I can see his point. The rest of the band laughs and says he is always a control freak, and he agrees. Fucking bassists. The remaining interviews go well; it’s the first time on video for all of them.

There’s a shift in the vibe as the set time draws closer. The guys, who were just talking about sitting near their heroes in Cannibal Corpse but being too shy to talk to them are now vibrating with energy. Not unfriendly at all, but their demeanor is changing. Vocalist Hugh Wright is shadow boxing, and appears to want to strike me for some reason. By the time we get to the group interview, it feels like I am talking to different people. They’re trying to be cool, mocking their own moniker. It comes off like an affect, but then I see that all their eyes are on the green room door. They need to work it out onstage.

When they finally get there, the room is almost vacant. Metal Mom and her friend are there, along with a couple of people who just happened by and have no idea who is playing. Funerxl Mxrch and their crew stay for the set and even attempt to get a pit going. It’s a classy show of support; playing a show and not having at least one other outfit stay until the end is dispiriting.

The house may be close to dead, but Kavana is very much alive, The energy release is organic; no synchronized head-banging poses here. Gabriel Muro and Spencer Rhea’s guitars echo the history of metal with the promise of evolution into something they can call their own. Phillipi’s bass locks with Nic Rutledge’s drums — even when Rutledge appears as if he is going to break through the skins — and Wright comes off like a very nice psycho, his guttural growls at odds with the occasional smile on his face.

As I move closer for video, I see them without the cavernous foreground of an empty hall, delivering intensity worthy of a packed house. They’re leaving it all onstage, on a Monday, at a place where they can’t even get drink tickets. Contrary to Drunk Boda’s philosophy, it matters. It fucking matters.