But Moses Nose isn’t the loudest game on the Peninsula anymore. Over the past several months, P.G. High’s Mental Musk have erupted onto the local scened. Last May, the teenaged headbangers won the Band-Aid Music Battle benefit at Planet Gemini. In between covers of Guns N’ Roses’ “Night Train” and Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” the outfit delivered a well-placed original, “Fogged In,” an angsty middle finger to Mental Musk’s butterfly-happy hometown. Lead singer Noah Cryns slinked around the stage like a self-aware Axl Rose who doesn’t need to shave. And guitarist Yvan Vucina’s obvious affinity for Slash goes beyond fretboard exploration – though the kid rocks some pretty fluid solos. In the vein of Slash’s hair/hat combo that famously hides his eyes from the world while he shreds, Vucina sports an untamable mane that he whips around at high velocities.

The $500 top prize that’ll go to the 2015 Battle of the Bands winner will be nice. But it might be dwarfed in value by the title itself. It will look quite nice on one young band’s website or Facebook page. Here are the contenders after the honor:

Mental Musk: Yvan Vucina (guitar), Noah Cryns (guitar), Eliot Chesebrough (bass), Patrick Kelly (drums) deploy a vigorous storm of ’70s metal and glam. The quartet recently blew minds at Good Old Days and Somos Gallery in Salinas.

These three talented bands deliver an exhilarating combination of punk and rock 'n' roll that forces any lover of music to jam along. Mental Musk, a hard rock band based out of Monterey takes it back to the days of classic rock and long hair with their rough but fluid sound evoking Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The band consists of talented musicians Yvan Vucina on guitar, Patrick Kelly on drums, Elliot Bradford Chesebrough on bass and Hayden Alvernaz as the lead singer.

Due to financial hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many in Monterey, Saturday, say their resolution is to have more work.

Yvan Vucina is a Pacific Grove resident and musician who says he hopes to find more opportunities playing his music.

“With COVID, it’s been really hard, I’ve been playing on the street and farmers markets," says Vucina.