grandson & H09909 give San Diego INERTIA whiplash

It was a rainy. It was cold. It was a Tuesday night nearing the holidays. The odds were against grandson when his INERTIA Tour hit San Diego’s Observatory Theater in North Park, with H09909 in tow. Despite everything, there was still quite an adequate turnout for the metal-meets-rap-meets-EDM enigmatic singer-songwriter.

But up first was another rather unconventional artist.

The punk-rap-metal duo H09909 — pronounced “Horror”, get it right — completely annihilated the stage as an opening act, going from full-thrash mode to lip syncing 90s dance songs to freezing for dramatic effect what seemed like every other second. Seriously, these guys are a SCENE. Theatrical, enigmatical, H09909 boys theOGM and Yeti Bones (complete with live drummer) won’t let you look away.

This night, theOGM rocked a white and black facemask while Yeti Bones had braids flying most of the time, jumping on and off the drum kit — even into the crowd to mosh and shout for a bit at the end of their set! Shoutout to Yeti Bones, too, for letting us fangirl him later at City Tacos, asking him to sign merch while he had a mouthful of food. Super cool of you.

After an interlude, the lights dimmed again to the speakers blaring Rage Against the Machine‘s “Killing In The Name Of”; the deliberate choice an homage to how grandson’s sound came to be. His players came out one-by-one to take their places, grandson spiraled out of the side of the stage like a tornado ready to wreak havoc.

He kicked, he screamed, he gave double thumbs ups.

Playing stuff off his latest Inertia album between older tracks, grandson put 1,010% into his performance. I literally thought he could pop a blood vessel in his forehead a couple times. This guy does NOT hold back. Politically-charged tracks like “Oh No”, “BRAINROT”, and “AUTONOMOUS DELIVERY ROBOT” hit extra hard, considering the world we’re all living in right now. We’re all doomed… but we can fix it. Thumbs up, “We Did It!!!”… oh wait, no we didn’t.

Saving his mega-hit “Blood // Water” for last, grandson and band got the audience angry, not at the music but at the situation we’re subjected to in this country right now. Screw sitting back and doing nothing — that’s how “the rich get richer while the sick get sicker”. If our hands are tied and our speech is silenced, might as well mosh our bodies around for a night. Before that gets tariffed, that is. We’re living in strange times, folks, but at least grandson is here for it. And kudos to his animal of a drummer going hard AF the entire time — boy, we saw you 👀

Photography by Franny Kovacs; recap by Kristy Rose

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