Levitation Halloween Freakend Bonus Coverage (with Photos)

In recent years, the annual Levitation Festival has occupied Halloween weekend, doubling as both a music festival and a holiday celebration. With the event shifting to an earlier date and new location this year, organizers seized the chance to curate a two-day lineup billed as the Halloween Freakend. The lineuppresumably assembled with a spooky, ghoulish fright-fest in mindfeatured a collection of artists that felt fitting in either name or style for the holiday weekend: Machine Girl, Clown Core, Black Moth Super Rainbow, and The Black Lips for reasons that seem obvious.

A newly reunited Stereolab and the highly anticipated booking of Viagra Boys for Halloween night rounded out the bill for the hallowed eve on Friday. Swedens Viagra Boys hadnt seen an Austin stage since 2019, with a previously scheduled 2022 Levitation performance canceled by the bandundoubtedly ramping up anticipation for Friday nights show.

Theres been a growing local buzz around Jcuuzi and their vibrant performances, and Fridays early set proved why. Its easy to imagine that costumes are a constant for the band, along with their prop chair and electrified, glam-synth dance-punk theatrics. A visual extravaganza backed by tunes that provide just enough energy to make it all work. Catch the band again at Resounds Holiday Hootenanny on Dec. 13 at Radio East.

An almost 20-year hiatus ended in 2019 for French avant-pop institution Stereolab, who returned to the stage with a newly minted 2025 release, picking up very much where they left off. The band, a highly anticipated fixture in the lineup, delivered a lengthy late-day set that built in tempo and energyslowly stirring the crowd into a dance party. As much of a dance party as Stereolab gets, anyway.

Atlantas Southern psych-garage punk extremists, The Black Lips, seized the opportunity to shift the tone of the fest in anticipation of headliners Viagra Boyswhile managing to keep things moderately toned down from their legendary, over-the-top performances.

A completely sold-out, record-attendance crowd had been forming for hours ahead of Viagra Boys set, complete with costumes as far as the eye could see. The shrimp took the win for most common of the evening. Why a shrimp? You figure it out.

So: a devil, a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, a Teletubbie, a cowboy, a princess, and a viking take the stage in Austin, TX, on Halloween night and completely destroy the Far Out Lounge. Right out of the gate, the band and crowd kicked it into overdrive, and the post-punk, black-humor, satirical Swedish band didnt touch the brakes until the end. No shortage of crowd surfingby both attendees and artistsas the audience squealed with delight for each track from the bands ever-growing discography of fan favorites.

Taking digs at modern masculinity, consumer culture, and self-destructive behavior with a heavy dose of irony and deadpan wit, frontman Sebastian Murphy strode across the stage a pyramid of health himselfcigarette and drink never far away. And as if it had just started, the party came to a cruising end with the band performing the postmortem view of our human fate, Worms. And all the little shrimps wandered off into the night, dreaming that one day soon, Viagra Boys will returnas performances of this magnitude just dont happen enough these days.

And then there was Saturday of the Freakend. A lineup that felt a little less potent, leaning more into the subcultures of dark ambient, avant-garde clown absurdity, and hardcore. It wouldnt be a Levitation-branded festival without a little rainand rain it did early on Saturday, dampening attendance for the early acts but letting up just in time for Pennsylvanias Black Moth Super Rainbow. Joined by local band The Octopus Project, their chilled-out, psych-tinged set paved the way for a night that progressively got edgierand pretty fucking weird at times.

NYCs Lip Critic ramped up the energy and tempo, serving up an enthusiastic set of synthed-out dance punk that set the tone for the smaller stages following act, Lightning Bolt. Lightning Bolt was the loud, noise-rock treat that drew a large crowd in heavy anticipation of their historically bombastic, frenetic set.

But somewhere between Lip Critic and Lightning Bolt, there was Clown Core. The first ten minutes of the set were occupied by a large man in all black wearing a ski maskand smoking a cigarette. Soon after, the two members of Clown Core stood on their small stage platform, poised with instruments, and simply waited while random images alternated on the screen behind them. And they waited… and waited. Eventually, they began playing their brand of Clown Core tracksa disjointed collision of jazz and metal sounds, paired with a barrage of AI-slop visuals that introduced a new form of surreal, dystopian porn that somehow felt appropriate for the moment.

A Halloween-weary crowdpart goth, part hardcore, part clownthinned out for the closing performance of Machine Girl.

One out of two aint bad, eh?