Roadtrips

Hard to believe, when you look back on it, how eager hardcore bands were to attempt heavy metal in the '80s -- in the name of progress, no less! Thrash bragging rights were worth plenty, and though there have to have been at least a few dozen bands claiming they'd thunk up the idea first, D.R.I. were the only ones who actually called an album Crossover (in '87, which was only, like, six years after Black Flag's Damaged). And so the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles have gotten away with the "seminal" tag for years, which at least gives them an excuse to get back together now and again. My fondest memory of them is still "Beneath the Wheel," from Thrash Zone (1989), which was, I think, about getting run over by a school bus. Perhaps they'll defrost it at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel (401-272-5876) in Providence on January 15, where they're on a bill with Murphy's Law, who remain the only New York hardcore band -- Agnostic Front included -- ever to make a better album after they'd re-formed than they had when they were together the first time around. Openers Tree and Blood for Blood are almost young enough to be their children.

Assembly-line goth-metal 'droids Fear Factory -- last seen cavorting with Gary Neumann and getting all millennially anxious about computers turning into mechanical animals on Obsolete (Roadrunner) -- headline a headbanger's ball at the hallowed St. John's Gymnasium (978-365-9085) in Clinton on January 22. Armenian-American post-metal bogeymen System of a Down, environmental anarcho-terrorist deathpunks Earth Crisis, Spineshank, and Shadows Fall shill for the carnival. Think of this as being the last year you get to see all your favorite techno-ghoul svengalis before that nasty Y2K bug makes all their sequencers go poof in a puff of silicon.

The noncompliance of death-disco trolls aside, we'll urge the demonic avant-thrash afterbirth brigade to rustle up a zip drive and back up their files as well. That especially goes for keyb-noise deconstructionists Today Is the Day, who are scheduled for an evening of mayhem at the Espresso Bar in Worcester (508-770-1455) on January 16 with enlightened Renaissance-core kids Converge and fellow apocalypticats 40 Days Rain. If the bug really does bite and we end up all paleolithic and stuff, the former Kyuss dudes now known as Queens of the Stone Age -- who headline the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge on January 23 -- will look even more prophetic; and Cro-Magnon hardcore animals Vision of Disorder -- who are at the Espresso Bar on January 22 -- will feel right at home.

-- CC