Roadtrips

Well, it had to happen sooner or later -- the Electric Hellfire Club, one of the better Satanic acid-industro-metal outfits, have been hedging toward straight-up, unabashed pop-metal of late, pushing their guitar-keyboards-drum machine thing up the devil-glam end of the My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult/KMFDM spectrum. And though they'd already done Kiss, AC/DC, and Bauhaus covers, their latest -- Unholy Roller, a remix/outtakes album -- has a pretty excellent cover of Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil," which is, after all, the mother of all these leather babies. What's more, their Web site reports they were working on a cover of INXS's "Devil Inside" just before Michael Hutchence killed himself. And that's even creepier than the death of EHC dude the Reverend Dr. Luv in a car crash a while back, which might not sound like a real Satanic way to go out except that Anton LaVey maintained till his death that he put the whammy on Jayne Mansfield before her big wreck, thereby bestowing the mark of the beast on all questionable auto collisions till Judgment Day. Or something. Anyway, the Electric Hellfire Club are at the Espresso Bar (508-770-1455) in Worcester this Saturday, April 18, with Rheys Obsession, Deadites, Mindfield, and Hansel.

We ran into Tree singer Dave Tree last weekend and he recounted a harrowing episode during which he was thrown out of a Q&A forum for filmmaker/fellow man of the people Michael Moore. Nice scene: Moore up on stage pimping his latest film, The Big One, once again about the evils of corporate downsizing, while the singer from a band whose last album was called Downsizing the American Dream gets thrown out by the pigs. Help Dave work through his anger on Wednesday April 22 at the Met Cafe (401-861-2142) in Providence with Blanks 77 and the Anti-Heroes, but not, as previously advertised, with Miltown, who had spent more than $100,000 of Irving Azoff's dough to record what probably would've been an amazing major-label debut before breaking up last week and bumming the hell out of a lot of people. Singer Jonah Jenkins walked out; the rest of the band have vowed to continue under another name, with new material and a singer to be named later. Meanwhile, Tree -- who seem yet again to have been exiled from Boston clubs -- will also be at the Espresso Bar in Worcester on Friday April 24 with Stealth, Chillum, and Hollowpoint.

And last but not least, the great young-lion saxophonist Joshua Redman shows up in a quartet at the Iron Horse Cafe (413-584-0610) in Northampton this Monday and Tuesday, April 20 and 21, for two sets each night.

--C.C.