Psycho Las Vegas music festival roars back to life in grand return

Exhale, everyone: Crowd surfing has returned to Las Vegas.

At Mandalay Bay’s Michelob Light Arena on Friday evening, a young lady rode a sea of extended arms towards a stage prowled by influential death-metallers Obituary, whose frontman sang as if he was attempting to physically expel his lungs through his esophagus.

At the same time at Mandalay Bay Beach, Paul Cauthen, a honky tonk hell-raiser with both the dimensions and the demeanor of a whiskey-slicked wrecking ball, led his band in ZZ Top covers and outlaw country revivalism as women in denim bell bottoms splashed in the pool next to mohawked dudes in matching denim jean jackets.

“Everything is sunshine,” Cauthen sang like a drunk with the keys to a local distillery. “You caught me at good time.”

“You caught me at a good time!” a guy in the crowd bellowed in response.

And so the evening went as Psycho Las Vegas got off to a raucous, can-you-believe-this-is-really-happening start. Beginning with a pool party on Thursday, the first big music festival to return since the pandemic came roaring back to life this weekend on four stages at Mandalay Bay.

The vibe? That of a grounded teenager’s punishment coming to an end.

Yes, of course, there were random group chants of “Beer!” upon occasion — because, well, beer!

No, you couldn’t see the grins behind all the mandatory face coverings, but you knew they were there, excited eyes betraying the smiles the masks hid.

“I’m so happy right now!” a dude in a Mastodon T-shirt exclaimed as said band took the stage at the Michelob Ultra Arena late Friday, the prog-metallers in question conjuring a sound equally posited on heft and precision, agility and aplomb, like a ballet of elephants.

This was a weekend of sudden, seismic mood swings.

On Saturday at Michelob Light Arena, reggae- and hip-hop-informed electronic music troupe Thievery Corporation introduced the sitar to Psycho Las Vegas and got the fest’s first ever conga line snaking across the floor. The Flaming Lips followed with cosmic, alt-rock mood enhancers featuring large inflatable robots and bubble machines; a few hours later, death-metallers Cannibal Corpse kicked sand in the face of subtlety and restraint at Mandalay Bay Beach.

One of the motifs of Psycho Las Vegas is bands playing seminal albums in full.

On Friday, Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA masterfully performed his masterful 1996 solo debut “Liquid Swords,” flaunting his prodigious mic skills by expertly handling verses originally delivered by fellow Clan greats like Ghostface Killah, RZA and Method Man, leading a band that treated the songs like pinatas, hitting them hard and playfully at once.

On Saturday, Danzig dug into their darkly libidinous sophomore effort, 1990’s “Danzig II: Lucifuge,” airing rarely played album cuts like “Girl” from the highly Doors-influenced record; the following night on the same stage, Southern-rock-informed metallers Down played their debut album “NOLA” in its entirety.

Despite the vast range of sonics on hand here, there was one constant among almost every performer: Many of the bands were playing out for the first time in upwards of a year-and-a-half — from the aforementioned Cannibal Corpse to shoegaze-y black metal unit Deafheaven, who mesmerized at Michelob Light Arena on Saturday.

Perhaps bossa nova/reggae throwback Claude Fontaine encapsulated it all best Friday while singing at the House of Blues.

“Your voice is a warm holiday….” she purred on “Strings of Your Guitar,” her voice like papier-mache — beatific, delicate. “Sing to bring me back my cheer.”

That she did, on a weekend defined by that very act, over and over and over again.

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter and @jbracelin76 on Instagram.