Dave Chamberlain

The four members who compose tonight's opener Pelican have created an entirely new kind of doom metal, a hybrid stocked with controlled Armageddon chords played slow and dirty, but with a sluggish, sliding cadence that causes the brain to atrophy while the band plays on stage or record. The band's lone release (a four-song "EP" that clocks in at longer than a half-hour and will kick your ass without apology) is set to be re-released by Hydrahead Records, the label owned by Isis guitarist Aaron Turner. Dalek is the oddball on the bill (just like it was last month, opening for Bad Wizard), as the three-man crew spreads a dark-wave hip-hop that flips between ultra-chill and heavyhanded from track to track. (For a taste, check out Dalek's "From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots" on Ipecac.) Oxes, touring in support of their second full-length, "Oxxxes" (Monitor), represent the closest thing to pure chaos that we'll ever see. Playing a well integrated hybrid of math rock, hardcore and power metal, and doing it on stage with wireless guitars, Oxes are equally as good at making you think as they are making you want to break everything in sight. Any metal fan worth his salt should own "Oxxxes" if for no other reason than "Kaz Hyashi '01," a brutal track that repeatedly shifts from reload cadence to a casual gait, forced along by crunching, stabbing guitar riffs that could get inside a diehard Venom fan's head. Headliners Isis take a less direct, more neurotic direction (at least for them) on "Oceanic" (Ipecac), making use of ambient and empty space theory before they move in like a metal titan clearing out the little people. Heavy, sometimes very heady shit--not unlike every band tonight.

Isis, et al, play September 26 at the Empty Bottle, 1035 North Western, (773)276-3600.

(2002-09-26)

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