Like a lot of bands from Japan, Dir En Grey is impossible to pigeonhole. This foursome is a weird alloy of disparate yet compatible styles, including industrial rock, nü metal and emo. And its members look the part of the über-commercial Japanese rock stars you’d see on Music Station. But…

Dangerous Nonsense is one of those bands that most people struggle to describe, then end up referencing some kind of metal. There may be some of that inside the classical rhythmic structures the group employs from time to time — but its mixture of performance art, radical feminist and anti-capitalist…

GUNS N’ ROSES at 1STBANK CENTER | 12/11/11 Some bands wait until the end of the set or an encore to pull out its most beloved material. Not Guns N’ Roses. Two songs into the set, the instantly familiar guitar riff was teased two, maybe three times before Axl Rose…

CONVERGE at the MARQUIS THEATER | 12/8/11 When Converge played the opening strains of “Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast” last night, the place erupted, with almost everybody taking part in a massive sing-a-long, singing like the lyrics were part of their DNA, while others climbed onto the stage and launched…

OHGR AT THE BLUEBIRD | 12/07/11″Don’t do coke,” Ogre urged the audience at the Bluebird last night. “Because I sure fuckin’ did, and it nearly killed me.” This unvarnished pronouncement from ohGr’s frontman came at the end of a particularly strong and sharp performance of “Timebomb,” one of the best…

In the fall of 2010, Robin Edwards of Lust-Cats of the Gutters wrote to CJ MacLeod and Ethan Hill and asked if they wanted to play a late-December show at the Carioca Cafe (aka Bar Bar) in December. Mcleod had seen the Lust-Cats months before and had written about them…

Between Josh Homme’s various bands and Fu Manchu, Torch the Wagon’s influences are easy to pick out. Even so, this isn’t the stoner-rock sort of thing that was rampant here a few years back. Instead, the band takes the splintery groove of its obvious inspirations and puts some real drive…

Everyone has heard of Guns N’ Roses, and for better or worse, most people have a strong opinion of the band. But what’s often lost in the tangle of melodrama and inter-band recriminations is what made GN’R popular in the first place. Appetite for Destruction came out of L.A. at…

The mathcore and metalcore titles attributed to Converge never quite fit. If musical precision is a requirement for the former, and heavy, breakneck-paced riffing qualifies as the latter, then Black Flag deserves the same designations. Converge was started in the early ’90s by a group of guys who didn’t really…

The same people who would label True Aristocrats’ music as “prog” would probably think the same thing of Naked City or Mr. Bungle. Not that the Aristocrats (due at Road 34 in Fort Collins on Saturday, December 10) sound anything like either of those two projects, but a vibrant spirit…

SCOTT KELLY at HI-DIVE | 12/3/11There were plenty of signs around the hi-dive last night indicating that this was an acoustic show. Meaning: Talking was ill-advised. Even so, some people near the stage decided to have a conversation at the beginning of Scott Kelly’s set, at which point he kindly…

PETER MURPHY at BLUEBIRD | 11/28/11The highlight of last night’s show came during the encore, when Peter Murphy came back on stage wearing a short fuzzy hat that looked like a Fez, playing a twelve-string acoustic. After creating an impressionistic soundscape, all four members of the band went into a…

This is the rare album that bucks expectations from beginning to end. Although “Circles!” employs that normally grating nu-metal screaming vocal break, and “Wageslave” makes extensive use of a Pantera-esque trudging groove, both songs transcend genre limitations, with a curiously moody yet fitting outro in the former and strong guitar…

These guys didn’t invent melodic hardcore; they spent their early years releasing albums on Fat Wreck Chords. This included 2003’s Revolutions Per Minute, recorded at the Blasting Room in Fort Collins — where the band has recorded most of its subsequent albums, like its 2011 offering, Endgame. The foursome’s anthemic,…

As a vocalist and guitarist in the foundational experimental metal band Neurosis, Scott Kelly’s influence has been deep and far-reaching, even outside the realm of heavy music, and that’s probably because Neurosis wasn’t originally part of a metal scene. The band’s members came up through hardcore and pushed that sound…

Founded by David Thomas Bailey of FaceMan, the Colorado Composers Collective includes incredibly accomplished musicians who believe that music born of formal training need not be exclusive to symphony orchestras and the like. This week, the Collective (due at the Walnut Room on Saturday, December 3) will be performing what…

VARLET AT LARIMER LOUNGE | 11/26/11One of the high points of this show was when Lilly Scott said we would be taking a break from the pre-recorded readings from Naked Lunch that opened the show and filled in the silences between songs for a nice older song. And rather than…

Lilly Scott formed Varlet with her brother David when she was still in high school. In 2009, after playing some low-key local shows, Lilly decided to audition for American Idol. After spending all day at Invesco Field before her audition, Scott ended up in the hospital with appendicitis. Fortunately, she…

This debut EP from Seris sounds like the band is serious about courting label attention. And it’s not just because the sonic character of all three songs is top-notch, but also because there isn’t a subpar performance in any of them. Seris sounds a lot like Nightwish with its penchant…