A Night of Heavy, Loud, Metal Music, Coming Up This Weekend at The Mink

UPDATE: Crap, crap, crap. Sorry, y’all — I got the date right, but the day of the week wrong. This post originally said the show in question would be on Friday, March 5th, when March 5th is actually a Saturday. Whoops. Apologies for my inability to read a damn calendar…

Got a very cool show coming up this Saturday, March 5th at The Mink that I wanted to mention before the weekend madness is upon us… Mink booking honcho Brandon and Jaron from {Fight Pretty} have put together an awesome lineup of heavy, raw (but not noisy, really), metal-ish bands that promises to blow the roof off the place, sort of a unnamed mini-festival of heavy-ass bands.

(And yes, I tried unsuccessfully to prod Brandon into coming up with a name for the thing; don’t all shows with more than, say, four bands need to have an actual name, these days?)

The headliners are Arkansans Rwake, who are pretty cool in a sludgy, slow-moving, backwoods-metal kind of way; “Crooked Rivers” is a pretty badass track, in particular. I’ve heard good things about Austinite semi-headliners The Roller, too, and the pair of tracks they’ve got up on Myspace are intriguing, to say the least, all stomping, crushing, throwback-ish heaviness with half-strangled vocals.

Dallas’s Big Fiction is a new one on me, but they’re darned decent, as well, in a heavy, post-hardcore kind of vein, with hints of The Jesus Lizard and Drive Like Jehu creeping in through the stomping, overfuzzed guitars.

For my money, though, the real reason to check out the show is for the local folks. {Ghost Town Electric} are utterly awesome, getting moreso every time I see/hear ’em — the band straddles the line between low-to-the-ground Southern rock and full-on metal, coming off like a Texas-bred answer to Northerners Federation X or (early) Priestess, with thick, bassy guitars, stomping rhythms, and nicely raw-throated “rawk” vocals (as opposed to metal-dude growling/gurgling). Plus, they can slow it down and let the country-boy roots show through, as on “Feelin’ Strange” — pretty cool to see.

On the more overtly “metal” side of things, I like {Defending the Kingdom} quite a bit, too — the band’s split-7″ with GTE this past year was pretty dang great, and live they’re furious and heavy, playing like they’re rocking a packed stadium even if they’re playing for a handful of people. I first saw them (and GTE, actually) at the inaugural Lost In Space Fest, and they surprised the hell out of me — check the writeup here.

I’m not real familiar with {The Burden}, but so far I’m liking their breakneck, desperate, bang-yr-head metalcore vibe — which is not what I’d thought the band would sound like, honestly; I think I had ’em confused with a much more “rock” band that’s got something to do with Kiefer Sutherland.

Same goes for {Cavernous}, who I’ve also yet to see live and from whom I’ve only heard a couple of tracks. What I have heard has been pretty impressive, however — smart, prog-ish (but still heavy), sharp-edged instro-metal that’s like a rougher, tougher Scale The Summit or a tighter, more metallic Pelican. I think I’m going to need to hear more from both these bands…

And I can’t forget my absolute favorites of the night, btw — I’ve been a fan of {Co-Pilot} for years now, but I’m even more blown away by the band’s recent veering leftward into the realms of instro-metal, in part because, well, they pretty well demolish the bulk of the atmospheric-y metal bands I’ve heard. Check out this past year’s The Course of Empire if you don’t believe me; I can listen to the damn EP over and over and over again, I swear.

It’s one of only a handful of instrumental albums I’ve heard where each song is absolutely distinct, where it doesn’t just all blend in together into one mess of instrumental noodling; there feels like there’s a theme, a purpose, to each freaking track, and that’s amazing.

The band will apparently be playing a “pretty heavy” set on Saturday, which I think means they’ll be focusing more on the new stuff and less on the older, more spacerock/shoegaze stuff; Brandon promises they’ll be debuting a “massive” new track from their forthcoming album, so that’s pretty good news right there…

I dunno a thing about Turbo Krieg, Odessa, or Peloton, sorry, and can’t even Google much of anything about any of ’em — there is a shoegazer-y indie-pop band called Peloton from the Bay Area, and they’re pretty cool in a Belle and Sebastian kind of way, but if they really are playing this show, I seriously fear for their lives. Memo to Big Burly Metal Dudes: please don’t beat up the nice indie-popsters from San Fran, okay?

In addition to the bands, btw, there’ll be some distros with tables set up to sell records and other things, plus cheap-ass Lonestar for $1 ’til the club runs out. The cover’s $12 for the of-agers & $15 for the kids, and the whole thing kicks off at 7PM (Brandon swears the first band’ll go on at 7:30PM). Come on out, y’all — it’s going to be good, good show.