MUDVAYNE LOST AND FOUND EPIC

As bands who’ve ditched the make-up that made them famous go, Illinois new-metal quartet Mudvayne are a lot less scary than Kiss. Free of their space-alien get-ups, singer Chad Gray and his mates look like typically burly rock dudes, not 876-year-old rolls of industrial carpet. Lost and Found, Mudvayne’s third album, could be scarier too. In a move some long-time fans will call a sign of mainstream dilution, the band dial down the creepy math-metal fury of their previous efforts. New cuts like "Just" and "Pushing Through," with its suggestion to "rip the womb," offer the pummeling guitar riffs and bottom-heavy bass throb that have endeared Mudvayne to a nation of bloodthirsty extreme-metal fans. But the dominant mode here is a restrained hard-rock melancholy that shares more with cantankerous radio warriors like Staind and Godsmack. On the single "Happy?", guitarist Greg Tribbett mellows his usual roar to a textured buzz while Gray moans tunefully about "this hole that is me."

Mudvayne + Black Sabbath + Iron Maiden + Shadows Fall + Black Label Society | Tweeter Center, Rte 140, Mansfield | July 15 | 617.228.6000