Gravezig’s Halloween Bash at Amsterdam Bar & Hall, St Paul (October 24, 2026)

With a week left of Rocktober, the Amsterdam Bar and Hall, in St Paul, was sufficiently rocked with a marathon of five local bands as part of Gravezig’s Halloween Bash (the next Gravezig’s Halloween show is in St Cloud on October 30th).

Starting out with Protolith, appropriately so since the word itself is the parent stone from which a given metamorphic rock is formed, so that is to say, the first rockers. They have so much potential considering this was their third show ever. Awesome vocals, even better stage presence. Though a later band ribbed them for taking off their masks since the day was warmer than expected. Check out their 2026 album Finality in Nothingness.

Check out the next band if you should ever see that they’re playing somewhere near you. VVolf Mask has been around for about a decade, spelled with two V’s, as band leader David puts it, “because I’m an a$$hole.” Should you go looking for their music with a search for VVolf Mask, even if we weren’t so close to a certain spooky holiday, you might run into about a dozen pages of furry coverings for faces. You will eventually find them as a “horror inspired cinema death punk band.” The songs begin with movie quotes, which as a fan of films, it’s always fun to figure out which movie the snippets are from. They played 13 songs in 25 minutes with an intermission of Halloween III’s “Silver Shamrock” commercial jingle set to the tune of “London Bridge is Falling Down”.

All the Pretty Horses was formed 33 years ago by Venus De Mars, so I had seen them probably about 16 years ago. Venus De Mars is just one of those individuals that you instantly notice when she walks into a room. Their shows are memorable but some of those venues aren’t in existence any more. Soft spots in my heart are left for places like the Triple Rock Social Club that they frequently played. Tonight was no exception, just electric. As the previous front-man had said to the crowd when thanking us for being there on a Saturday night “what else are you going to do? Go home and play with your cats?” I thought, I need to bring my cats to an All the Pretty Horses show so that they can chase around the blinking moving lighted dots on the ground.

Speaking of mourning lost music spaces and communities, How Much Can We Take is the new release from the next band Too Late, But Still. Moving from the colorful set of the last band to his younger band, having released their EP just two years ago, we went from a rainbow to a black and white video background, bringing us back into the shadows. Notable cover of a Nirvana song from a much-beloved album Nevermind. When the crowd started to shift, the lead singer came off the stage himself, losing a microphone male connector when pacing the floor. When he asked the audience to look for the part, he jokingly said, “you see, when music instruments fall in love…”

While we’re on the subject of love, there was much of it for Gravezig, a tribute band to the Misfits. Specifically, as the name spells, the Glenn Danzig and Michale Graves eras. The stage was set up with great Halloweeny decorations, glowing and spectacular, with a minute-by-minute countdown of the event. I did see several costumes in the crowd, a night worthy of their annual Halloween bash.

Photos courtesy of Jason Hoff

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