Photo by SEAN CALDWELL It was an evening of magnificent sensory overload last night at Johnny Brenda’s as the Japanese grind-pop duo Melt-Banana performed amid a vivid array of animated lights and electric colors, triggering the sold-out crowd to erupt in a wild, mass of exuberant imbalance. Touring in support of the band’s newest release, Return of the 13 Hedgehogs (MxBx Singles 2000-2009), vocalist Yasuko Onuki and guitarist Ichirou Agata created a perpetual frenzy of blast beats and over-amplified pop melodies complimented by Yasuko’s cartoonish pitch. Sharing the bill last night were the Philadelphia-based crust oddity HIRS and the synth-driven […]

Photo by DAN LONG We were a collection of blissed-out bobbleheads beating the air in unison last night at Johnny Brendas as the Italian psych metal trio Ufomammut delivered unto us an onslaught of riff-borne aggression within a haze of deafening sonic bliss. Touring in support of their latest album, Ecate, Ufomammut’s performance followed the space age post-metal atmospherics of Philadelphia’s Ominous Black and the scream-laden slowed up doom of Portland’s Usnea, an interesting duality culminating in Ufomammut’s third act as the band churned out weighty blankets of reverberating tone and rhythmic density that would violently unwind. While none of […]

Photo by DYLAN LONG Jane’s Addiction is plumbing its history — and the latent demon of nostalgia — by touring the nation, playing each and every track of its first studio album “Nothing’s Shocking,” the 1988 album that helped the band graduate from L.A. scenesters to legitimate international alternative stars. It’d be easy to say that Jane’s, at least this incarnation, has aged about as gracefully as the music industry itself, but that’d be a lie. What transpired on Saturday night at the Electric Factory was, in fact, a snapshot of a band — its historical record firmly rooted — […]

Photo by DAN LONG Last night, I stood in the uncomfortable throng of enthusiastic attendees at the Electric Factory’s sold out Faith No More gig, the room alive with an ear-crippling volume from both the band and the voices around me. Faith No More, the alt-metal superstars whose appreciation and influence peaked in the early to mid-90s, were gracious and thankful for the positive reception from the crowd. Following an impressive and highly entertaining performance from the opening band, Le Butcherettes, (whose wildly charismatic DEVO-meets-Grace Slick frontwoman Teri Geri Bender who abandoned the stage at one point to shimmy, shuffle, […]

Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Skulking into the basement of the First Unitarian Church last night to see the sold-out show of noise-rock duo Lightning Bolt felt like more of a “Boys Only” club than most concerts usually do for me. Unsurprisingly, the guy to gal ratio was at an unhealthy 10:1, and that’s counting the begrudgingly-dragged-along girlfriends. Regardless, I can only assume that everyone there was a loyal and willing fan, seeing no issue with having his or her face violently torn off by Lightning Bolt’s signature machine-gun-meets-outer-space vortex of sound.  Getting the appropriately themed lightning bolt-shaped marks on […]

Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Underground Arts, which more closely resembles a long-ago closed subway stop than a concert venue, was a fitting setting to catch the subterranean rumblings of genre-defying Aussie group Hiatus Kaiyote. The band’s go-to sound is a dizzying combination of jazz, hip-hop, electronic, soul, rock and pretty much everything in between. The true disciples of Hiatus Kaiyote were a similarly diverse lot. However, they managed to pack the floor space as early and tightly as possible in order to fully experience the impending eruption of sound. For me, perpetually lagging behind on long-winding-road-suburban-girl time, this meant […]