SERAPHIM SHOCK The Siren Project • Lola Black 08.27.10 | Gothic Theatre, Englewood Used to be you could count on the opening bands at a Seraphim Shock show to be pretty awful. But in the last several years, this trend has been bucked. For evidence, you need look no further…

In June last year, there was a show called Denver Does Denver that featured musicians and bands from a broad spectrum of the scene covering their favorite musical compatriots — or at least those whose music they found interesting or amusing to perform. For starters, Slight Harp and Safe Boating…

The first two tracks of this album, “My Shell” and “Poor, Poor Vivian,” wouldn’t be out of place on a far-better-than-average pop-punk album. “Green Eggs and Ham,” meanwhile, is obviously influenced by early-’90s grunge, but with more power-pop flavorings — gritty like Cheap Trick could be in the early ’80s,…

Black Heart Revival opens with a track that recalls Seraphim Shock’s ’90s period, when the band used enigmatic samples to set a dark mood before foreboding instrumentation exploded into razory metal riffing over the soaringly melodic and sepulchral vocals of Charles Edwards. From there, though, the album lunges toward the…

David Longoria, Matt Simon and Jason Chronis could have rested on their laurels as former members of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and Voxtrot, respectively, and waxed into the familiar. Instead, the trio teamed up with Alan Schaefer, son of famous Austin guitar maker Ed…

If you’ve been a cognizant observer of local bands at all, you may see these guys take the stage and think, “Oh, no, it’s another one of those local-band supergroups!” Rather than try to list the other projects that have contributed to this sextet, let’s just say that Hindershot (due…

SFTSTPS • Pollination Population Hideous Men • No Funeral • Married in Berdichev 08.20.10 | Rhinoceropolis, Denver For this show, Kate Ersing, who performs under the name Pollination Population, draped a string of tiny red lights along the edges of her performance area, around the myriad tape machines and other…

This latest offering from Lucio Duran, formerly of long-running experimental electronic outfit Blackcell, immediately recalls late-era Future Sound of London with its electro-organic sound. “The Machinist” is, roughly, a 140 bpm equivalent of jogging through darkened and deserted city streets with only sparking electrical wires lighting your way. “Infused With…

Atlanta, Georgia, is a locus of some of the most interesting music coming out of the United States at the moment. It’s known for its flourishing hip-hop as well as its experimental rock, so it’s no surprise that an act like Listener would emerge from the place. Dan Smith and…

San Francisco’s Ty Segall is garage rock in the same sense that Thee Oh Sees and the Coachwhips are — meaning that its show is as disorienting for its weirdness and intensity as the music is. Woven into the stripped-down, ebulliently delivered rock and roll are warped sounds, straightahead noise,…

It seems inevitable that these guys are going to be compared to Animal Collective more often than is warranted. But really, the sound and overall aesthetic of Gauntlet Hair is far closer to that of Deerhunter. We’ve heard plenty of bands recently whose ghostly vocals sit indistinguishably in the mix…

In 2000, Kitty Vincent and Joe Grobelny started a band with some friends after meeting through an ad at Albums on the Hill in Boulder. Facade was the name of that outfit, and its music was kind of a cross between jazz and dream pop, with Vincent’s velvety voice weaving…

It would’ve been too obvious for Aaron Collins, former frontman of the rock barbarians known as Machine Gun Blues, to do something similarly rambunctious with his new band, A. Tom Collins (due at the hi-dive on Tuesday, August 17). Fortunately, he opted to accentuate his actual musical talents with this…

Warlock Pinchers Magic Cyclops • Hot White • Melvins Lite • Taun Taun • Itchy-O 08.07.10 | Gothic Theatre | Night Two Before taking the stage, Magic Cyclops or someone was playing a bit of the music from the movie Fletch over the P.A., which was amusing on its own…

WARLOCK PINCHERS Cap’n Fresh and the Stay Fresh Seals • Murder Ranks • Dressy Bessy 08.06.10 | Gothic Theatre | Night One Because some of its shows are so absurd, it’s hard to tell if Cap’n Fresh and the Stay Fresh Seals is some kind of a comedy act or…

There was a time when pop punk wasn’t just a fashion statement, musical or otherwise, despite bands like Green Day and NOFX making the style known to people who couldn’t tell you anything about 924 Gilman Street. The Gamits emerged in 1996 as an energetic trio that didn’t just play…

Starting out with a subtle drone of cycling sounds, like time-lapse clouds streaming across the night sky, side one of this album slowly evolves into darker territory, conjuring a rainy weather pattern moving in with the summer breeze. Textured low end later in the mix suggests the sound of helicopters…

Too mathy and precise for a lot of hardcore fans and too weird and noisy for a lot of metalheads, the Dillinger Escape Plan has nonetheless carved a niche for itself in both realms. Starting in Morris Plains, New Jersey, the Plan quickly made a name for itself with frenetically…

They were always the band I thought should have been really big,” declares Dale Crover of the Warlock Pinchers. “Certainly they were doing metal mixed with rap before it became popular, and they were also a lot better than a lot of those later bands. More like if rap was…

Miniature Tigers • Sprinto Band • The Dont’s and Be Carefuls 07.30.10 | Larimer Lounge, Denver At this point, the Dont’s and Be Carefuls’ “new” keyboardist, Dane Bernhardt, formerly of the Silver Cord, is fully integrated into the band. At least that’s how things sounded this past Friday. These guys…