Roadtrips

Every new regime needs to establish its own lineage, its own history. When Metallica ruled the metal world, they used 1986's Garage Days Re-Revisited to declare themselves the heirs to obscure Brit-metal (Budgie, Diamondhead) and American punk (Misfits). When Korn's Family Values posse staked out their own territory (as befits their status as loud rock's pre-eminent tastemakers and standard bearers), it proved less obvious than one would have expected. If Metallica were the product of punk and metal, Korn surely are the product of metal and hip-hop; and though hip-hop has been well represented in the Korn camp (Ice Cube; Limp Bizkit covering House of Pain), they've been inexplicably fonder of new wave than metal. Best example: Family Values protégés Orgy updating New Order's "Blue Monday." If Marilyn Manson made it difficult for mainstream folks to distinguish between the metal militia and goth's monkish hermitage (by the way, if anyone claims to have found a "goth mafia," I've got a Loch Ness Monster to sell 'em), then Orgy seem emblematic of Korn's new metallic order, which places more emphasis on the singer (and the listener) as mortally wounded victim than the singer as a hell-bent reactionary monster who's not gonna take it any more. So be gentle to the beasts when Orgy show up at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel (401-272-5876) in Providence this Monday, May 17.

You want world music? How 'bout Canadian Celt-pop -- which could, if we're not mistaken, be the absolute whitest lineage on the planet. The Rankins -- formerly the Rankin family -- are the purveyors of said Celt-pop, and they'll bring it to Pearl Street (413-584-0610) in Northampton on May 14 and the Berklee Performance Center (617-931-2000) in Boston on May 15.

Weirdly enough, even SPIN picked up on NYC post-metal standouts Candiria, who have both the mathematical precision and the implied jazziness of early Helmet, plus an MC. They also have some concrete twists and turns that suggest a Branca student in there somewhere, and the kind of innovative inner mechanics that tend to reinvigorate dead genres. They're at the Met Café (401-861-2142) in Providence tonight, May 13. Other odds and ends: aging NYC hardcore "legends" Murphy's Law play Commercial Street (508-797-4550) in Worcester on May 14, then join up with that old punk Lee Ving and Fear for a gig on May 16 at Lupo's. And June of '44 spinoff the Shipping News join Victory at Sea on the 18th at the Met Café and on the 19th at the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge.
-- CC