After a couple of long-winded cinemascope yawners, Mike Patton’s avant-metal supergroup Fantômas — with the Melvins’ King Buzzo, Slayer’s Dave Lombardo, and Mr. Bungle’s Trevor Dunn — return to the bracing Naked City smash-up-derbyism of their debut with Suspended Animation, on which their self-styled "cartoon music" is rendered in perforated grindcore-length snippets of buzzsaw metal, free-jazz skronk, and circus-music blurt. (Iann Robinson’s review is in "Off the Record.") In other words, they’ve switched bodies with tour mates the Locust, who in turn stretch their insectoid synth/noise bursts into soundtrackish suites of semi-ambient mayhem on their Safety Second, Body Last EP (Ipecac). Both groups are at the Living Room (401-521-5200) in Providence on Tuesday and at the Roxy (617-338-7699) in Boston on Wednesday.

Not to be confused with the heavier, pulverizing post-metal outfit the Chariots, Minneapolis’s Chariots (America, North) have a Dave Gardner–produced album, Congratulations (Troubleman), that bludgeons and berates in the epileptic freak-punk mold of Jesus Lizard and the Birthday Party. Tonight (April 7) they’re at Great Scott (617-566-9014) in Allston, and Sunday they’re at AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence, both with New York’s electro-punkish power couple Mommy and Daddy.

Perhaps hoping to avoid the jock-core backlash that’s dragged Korn’s children to the grave, the newly unmasked Mudvayne have ditched their asinine stage names for Lost and Found (Sony). And like their still-masked compatriots in Slipknot, they’re playing heavier and thrashier — the disc’s leadoff track, "Fucking Determined," sounds like Pantera’s "Fucking Hostile" getting smacked with the ugly stick. Mudvayne headline the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester on Sunday with Bloodsimple — the first signing to Mudvayne’s Reprise-distributed Bullygoat imprint, with ex-members of Brooklyn chumpcore outfit VOD and Mastodon bassist Troy Sanders’s brother Kyle.

Meanwhile, former Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul — brother of slain guitarist Dimebag Darrell — joins the surviving members of Damageplan as special guests at WAAF’s Indoor Beach Party on Saturday at Tsongas Arena (617-931-2000) in Lowell with Ozzy guitarist Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society, Grammy-nominated home-town emo-metal gods Killswitch Engage, and ragga-metal ragers Skindred.

FYI: Alicia Keys has sold out her May 4 gig at Agganis Arena in Boston; Wednesday she kicks off a two-night stand with Kanye West soul protégé John Legend at Foxwoods (800-200-2882) in Connecticut.