Yr. Weekend, Pt. 1: Metal Cage Match (Early Man vs. War Master!) + Sideshow Tramps + Fat Tony + Misc. Art/Film + More

What a freaking week, I swear…I feel like I’ve barely stopped moving the whole damn time. Ready for a bit of a break, so I’m obviously happy to see the weekend come rolling in (as it generally does)… Sadly, it’ll have to be a brief one, ’cause, well, I’m kind of fried & unable to think straight for any long stretch of time.

Before I go into the musical stuff, though, I need to mention a couple of other cool-ass things. First off, the MFA is showing Akira Kurosawa‘s classic Rashomon up at Discovery Green tonight, starting at 7:30PM. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a mesmerizing film, one that seems far, far ahead of its time for what it is (and heck, they even did a Leverage episode based on the idea…)

Then there’s a neat-sounding art show at the Canvas/Immergent Worship Space on Montrose (3205 Montrose, to be exact) that’ll feature some good pals of this little blog, particularly air-guitar hero/promoter/artist Jacob Calle and {A Thousand Cranes} mastermind Travis Kerschen. Get on over and check it out — from 7-10PM.

Here goes for the actual musical things that sound cool to me:

Early Man/Evile/Bonded By Blood/Venomous Maximus/Legion @ Walter’s
War Master/Iron Age/Mammoth Grinder/Hatred Surge @ The Mink
Holy wow. It’s like a full-on MeTaL cage match, y’all… The only thing that’d make this cooler is if the two venues were closer together (but hey, this is Houston, after all, where nothing is).

I mean, how do you choose? Early Man are pretty incredible, heavy and fast like vintage pre-Black Album Metallica, and local boys {Venomous Maximus} are nicely head-banging themselves.

But then there’s Austin/Houston icons Mammoth Grinder, who by all reports are amazing live, plus Iron Age, whose last album was a pleasant surprise for a band I’d initially written off as “hardcore dudes playing thrash,” and headliners {War Master}, whose new Thrones of Tyranny 7″ sounds pretty good (although I’m still not a fan of the vocals, sorry). Flip a coin?

Sideshow Tramps/The Dead Revolt/Hannah Mille/Tax the Wolf/Mouther @ Fitzgerald’s
A bit of sad news about this one, unfortunately — drama-rockers {The Manichean} were supposed to be playing tonight at Fitz, but guitarist Justice apparently had a medical emergency this AM that involved not being able to breathe for a while (gah!), and the band had to drop off the bill because of that. Damn, man…we’ll definitely be sending happy thoughts your way.

The show still sounds pretty cool, mind you; {The Sideshow Tramps} are always fun, and I really, truly need to check out {Tax the Wolf} live one day soon, because what I’ve heard so far has been pretty darn decent. And Fitz has now added ever-awesome indie-hip-hop dude {Fat Tony} to the mix, so it’s automatically going to be badass. (Seriously, it’s a Law of H-town Show Physics.)

The Orbans/Darwin’s Finches @ Dean’s Credit Clothing
The Cult @ House of Blues