The headbanger’s bill of the fall goes down at the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester on Saturday. Headliners Slayer are still, well, Slayer, but this time out, they’re playing their ’86 masterpiece Reign in Blood in its entirety and unleashing their latest gizmo, an actual shower of gore, for the finale. (See "Off the Record" in Music, for my review.) Get there early, because Massachusetts-based Ozzfest vets Killswitch Engage’s recent The End of Heartbreak is turning thrash diehards into emo-metal true believers, and because Mastodon’s crushing new Leviathan (Relapse) infuses their patented woolly-mammoth grind with one part Justice-era Metallica and two parts Moby Dick (of the call-them-Ishmael and Zeppelin varieties). The same bill also hits Lupo’s at the Strand (401-331-LUPO) in Providence on Monday and the State Theater (207-780-8265) in Portland on Tuesday.

Dave "people hate me because of you" Mustaine played himself pretty hard in Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, but he gets the last laugh, sorta, on Megadeth’s comeback disc The System Has Failed (Sanctuary). Returning to the half-goofy, half-genius, jazz-disciplined speed metal of Rust in Peace, Mustaine out-thrashes St. Anger and includes a certified ’tallica grudge track to boot. To stoke further your appetite for ’80s Bay Area destruction, Dave is bringing along Kirk Hammett’s old band Exodus as the openers. They’re at Avalon (617-262-2424) in Boston on Saturday.

Sure, there’s only one song that sounds like classic Helmet on their comeback disc Size Matters (Interscope) — but, hey, that’s more than we could say for Betty. At Axis (617-262-2437) on Saturday, Page Hamilton resucitates the franchise with latter-day guitarist Chris Traynor, former Anthrax bassist Frank Bello, and John Tempesta, who’s best known as White Zombie’s drummer, though we remember him from the 1990 Impact Is Imminent line-up of — wait a minute! — the post-Hammett Exodus! Tempesta also joined his guitarist brother Mike (of Powerman 5000) on Blah, Blah Blah: Love Songs for the New Millennium (Eclipse), the debut album by former Rob Zombie guitarist Riggs’s new Zombie-clone band Scum of the Earth. Mike Tempesta and PM5K’s Adrian Ost are in the Scum touring line-up, which hits Jarrod’s (508-222-8878) in Attleboro on Friday. Meanwhile, ex-Helmet bassist Henry Bogdan brings his Hawaiian-swing band the Moonlighters to ZuZu (617-864-3278) in Cambridge on Sunday.

You always suspected Good Charlotte were a boy band in Hot Topic drag. Now it’s on the record: on "I Just Wanna Live," from their new The Chronicles of Life and Death (Epic), Joel Madden unmasks a heretofore-unseen Timberlake-style falsetto, the pouty kid with the lip ring borrows a few chords from Blondie’s "Rapture," and a screech of synth-strings grabs the beat by the ankles and shakes it till there’s change on the sidewalk. Disco mallpunk? Best thing they’ve ever done. GC are on a bill with Avril’s boyfriend’s band Sum-41 and the all-star NYHC supergroup Hazen Street at Tsongas Arena (978-848-9600) in Lowell on Sunday.