Tag: Mortiis

Saturday | 03.01
What: Munly & The Lupercalians, Rowboat at Redwing Blackbird
When: 7:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Club
Why: Jay Munly has been making music with his Munly & The Luperclians project since the mid-2000s when not focusing on Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and Denver Broncos UK. It’s more dark folk, more Goth than the other configurations of music for which he’s known down to the more ritualistic stage garb. But the level of songcraft and sonic details we have come to expect from Munly as well as the richness of storytelling infuses this band as well. In a completely different style but equally steeped in literature and emotionally charged indie rock is Rowboat fronted by Sam McNitt. Some may know him from his time in the great shoegaze band Blue Million Miles but with Rowboat McNitt seems to have found his most fruitful lane for songwriting with high concept albums and insightful lyrics backed by finely sculpted songs that often soar into passionate passages that bring the listener along for the catharsis. Redwing Blackbird is a fusion of Cure-esque post-punk and synth-driven darkwave with creative flair and more than a touch of grit.

Wednesday | 03.05
What: Glixen, She’s Green and After
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Glixen is a shoegaze band from Phoenix that formed in 2025 and in 2024 could be seen touring with DIIV. This year the group released its latest EP Quiet Pleasures. Though citing influences as disparate as Godflesh, t.A.T.u, Hum and Björk the band’s output thus far seems most obviously inspired by My Bloody Valentine with the warping yet dense guitar atmospheres and paradoxically low key but loud and present production. Like floating through a storm of sounds and emotion with the band into transcendent spaces. She’s Green from Minneapolis is likeminded though more in the realm of indiepop but not short on the granular Slowdive-esque beauty in its melody crafting.

Wednesday | 03.05
What: Finom w/Brother Bird
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Finom is the experimental pop duo from Chicago formerly known as OHMME. Its 2024 album Not God was produced by Jeff Tweedy and sounds like some kind of lost avant-garde New Wave from the 80s and benefiting from the excellent dual vocals the band has made a feature of its songwriting all along. It sounds like music for a stage play or other theatrical performance that has yet to manifest in the physical world outside the band’s typically engaging live performances.

Thursday | 03.06
What: Chat Pile w.Gouge Away and Nightosphere
When: 6:30
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Chat Pile delivered yet another scathing and electrifying set of songs with its 2024 album Cool World. There is more experimentation with the atmospheric backdop of the songs but don’t worry its delivered with the blunt and caustic fervor that has rendered the band one of the most exciting in the world of modern heavy music and noise rock. Somehow the band manages to skewer the worst aspects of culture and civilization while demonstrating a vulnerability and compassion for the less fortunate and oppressed in its pointed lyrics. Live the group also injects the performances with a sense of humor without downplaying the moment we’re all in given political and environmental reality. Gouge Away has been in a similar lane with its own lyrics but the Florida hardcore/noise rock band has a more angular flow to its rhythms that perfectly accent the ferocious vocals that fans of DC post-hardcore will fully appreciate. Nightosphere is a shoegaze-inflected post-hardcore outfit from Kansas City, Missouri who expertly navigate dreamlike reverie and scorching intensity and emotional heft. When the group played at Ghost Canyon Fest in 2024 in Denver it was a clear standout among standouts.

Thursday | 03.06
What: Palomino Blond w/High., Moonpool and Blackberry Crush
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Palomino Blond released its latest album You Feel It Too last October confirming its mastery of blending a kind of pop-inflected shoegaze and grungy emo. High. from Boonton, New Jersey issued its new album Come Back Down on January 24, 2025 as an excellent set of glittery and fuzzy slowcore songs. Moonpool used to be called Sickly Hecks and put out some worthwhile indie rock in the more shoegaze vein but with the new name the outfit has traveled further in that direction including increased use of synth to craft its evocative soundscapes. Rounding out the evening of modern shoegaze is Denver’s Blackberry Crush whose inspirations from 90s grunge is really only apparent in its deft use of distortion and crunchy riffs in its more recent songwriting.

Friday | 03.07
What: Mind’s Eye w/Cathedral Bells and Bruha
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Mind’s Eye has been mining the territory between dream pop, early 2010s indie rock, 2020s bedroom pop and post-punk for the past few years with vulnerable songs of yearning and heartache. Catch the group ahead of its March 21, 2025 release of the new album If she looks like heaven… Orlando, Florida’s Cathedral Bells has been one of the bands of choice for those with a taste for ethereal, synth infused, shoegaze-y chillwave. The recordings have a kind of lo-fi charm that the band is somehow able to translate well to the live setting even with the more present, richer tones, just the intimacy and immediacy of the performances intact.

Saturday | 03.08
What: Almanac Man, Only Echoes, Burning Sister, Shewolf
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Almanac Man are a noise rock trio from Denver whose sound seems rooted in early 90s post-hardcore and the angular, math-y rhythms of DC post-hardcore and maybe they came together as appreciators of the likes of mclusky and Unsane. Its lyrics take a more creative approach to commenting on social issues and the state of the world as it has been for decades clearly informed by literature as much as music. Only Echoes is an instrumental, post-metal band with a knack for crafting epic melodies and equally grand, crushing riffs with a gift for dynamic arrangements that lend its songs a cinematic quality worthy of poetic song titles like “Locus Mons” and “Truth Unveiled By Time.” Burning Sister’s psychedelic stoner rock sounds like a better version of what some of the 2000s stoner rock bands were doing partly because this trio though clearly touched by the foundational mutations of Sleep and Black Sabbath appear to have gotten into Loop, Mudhoney and the heavier end of Krautrock. Shewolf, the Denver artist, is in a similar vein to the other acts on the bill but his sounds seem more influenced by shoegaze and he even has an ambient album but this show will probably be the heavier rock but it would be cooler if it was a full on ambient set instead to break up the evening a little.

Monday | 03.10
What: Crush of Souls, Weathered Statues, Plague Garden and Kill You Club DJs
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Crush of Souls is a coldwave/post-punk band from Paris, France that sounds like he absorbed the great, percussive synth work of the better EBM bands, the mix of acoustic and electronic blend of Clan of Xymox and a touch of the enigmatic flair of Legendary Pink Dots. Opening are two of Denver’s, and America’s, best deathrock/post-punk acts. Plague Garden’s rhythm-driven songs and cinematic arrangements lend its songs a depth to match the emotionally-charged vocals. Weathered Statues is a band that came out of the local punk scene and that spirit is infused into its songs so that even as they are on the melancholic side they have an arresting exuberance, especially live. And like Plague Garden its electronic side of the music is imaginative and brings to the songwriting an early 80s New Wave sensibility that transcends time.

Monday | 03.10
What: Lime Cordiale w/The Orphan and The Poet
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Australian pop group Lime Cordiale formed in 2009 and spent some years developing from the founding duo of brothers Louis and Oliver Leimbach. Icehouse frontman and songwriter Iva Davies saw the brothers perform at a type of band competition and took them under his wing inviting the fledgling band on the 2011 Icehouse tour. After a string of EPs Lime Cordiale finally released its debut album Permanent Vacation (2017, no relation of or nod to a comeback record by some other band released thirty years prior). By that point the group obviously had a gift for crafting songs with a wide open feel, lush arrangements and the ability to take on heady themes without a heavy hand. 2024 saw the release of Enough of the Sweet Talk. This time out the band chart the course of a relationship from early idealizing of one’s beloved to that period when people understand one another and accept each other as they think they are and to the end when they don’t feel like they ever really knew each other. It is in a way the opposite of the usual pop album about how great love is, rather something more realistic about how many relationships progress yet without dishonoring the feelings of the best of that arc of human experience. And all graced with the band’s elegantly crafted melodies and vocals imbued with a sensitivity and warmth.

Monday | 03.10
What: Soccer Mommy w/Hana Vu
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Sophie Allison’s gift for vulnerably introspective songwriting and imaginative songwriting and masterful guitar work has been on fully display since her earliest releases. And the 2024 Soccer Mommy album Evergreen with its embrace of a more intimate and organic sensibility dives fully into sounds that reflect an immediacy and tenderness that is palpable. Like hearing an indie pop reincarnation of the more cinematic end of Sparklehorse. There’s something so compellingly fragile about the songwriting that its easy to get caught up in its gentle energies even when Allison kicks up the grit a little on, say, “Drive.” Live Soccer Mommy seems to effortlessly prove she’s one of modern indie rock’s most interesting musicians and with flourishes of her prowess on guitar without undercutting the elegance of her entrancing songs.

Thursday | 03.13
What: Rose City Band w/Tan Cologne
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Ripley Johnson is perhaps more widely known by many for his membership in influential psychedelic space rock band Wooden Shjips and the experimental psych rock outfit Moon Duo. Rose City Band delves into another corner of the psych universe as what might be described in short as a cosmic country band in the classic vein. With transporting pedal steel courtesy Barry Walker Jr. and Ripley’s seemingly effortless countrified riffs like a band playing in a backyard with a carefree spirit. The result is something that fans of early 70s Grateful Dead and Gram Parsons would appreciate and with an easy pace that is as calming as it is transporting. The songs get into your head the way and uplift the way a patch of nice weather will lift your spirits. The group’s fifth album Sol Y Sombra dropped on January 24, 2025 via Thrill Jockey and available on vinyl and for digital download and streaming.

Friday | 03.14
What: The Space Lady w/Golden Brown, snowswept and RAREBYRD$
When: 7-12
Where: The Aztlan Theater
Why: Susan Dietrich grew up in the rural environs of Las Animas, Colorado before trying college in Boulder and being disillusioned with academia made her way to San Francisco and became involved with the hippie movement. For years she and her then husband survived off their art and landing in Boston following the development of a fledgling synth and guitar band that morphed into a solo project for Dietrich. Starting what became The Space Lady with a winged helmet Dietrich evolved from performing with an accordion to a Casiotone MT-40 keyboard with vocals done through a delay pedal becoming a fixture of the San Francisco underground, street performer scene upon returning to the city in the mid-80s. Performing some originals and uniquely rendered covers of classic rock, synth pop and country Dietrich has become a legend of outsider music even after “retiring” in 2000 to return to Colorado to care for her parents. These days The Space Lady performs now and again in Colorado and beyond and this is a rare chance to see her at one of Denver’s classic, independently-owned venues with experimental artists no strangers to expanding the limits of conventional musical expressions.

Friday | 03.14
What: Witch Cat Records Presents: Tammy Shine, Baby Baby, Debaser, Head Slug
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Witch Cat Records is celebrating its founding with this showcase of artists that reflect the eclectic yet well curated roster of the imprint. Tammy Shine is the charismatic frontwoman of Dressy Bessy and this solo project is no less spirited and raw but the songwriting is a little more stripped down without losing the emotional impact. Baby Baby is the art pop solo project of Lily Conrad. The 2023 album BabyBabyForever is like some kind of unlikely No Wave synth pop record that reflects the performance art aspect of Conrad’s live show. It is collection of melancholic dreamlike singles imbued with an entrance, ethereal appeal and richness of feeling that really sweep you into their spell. Debaser is the drum and bass project of Josh Taylor who some may know for his various projects over the years including Friends Forever and this particular effort dates back to that time as well and splices what might be described as outsider garage rock and jazz and punk. Head Slug, recorded anyway, sounds like the kind of haunted, lo-fi slowcore that you would hope to hear in some DIY art film.

Saturday | 03.15
What: Gold Glue w/Zoya
When: 7
Where: Leon Gallery
Why: Gold Glue is the latest band from Eddie Durkin of Lazarus Horse and Sparkler Bombs so it’ll probably be heavy on well crafted pop songs with earnest poetry deep personal insight.

Saturday | 03.15
What: Lesser Care w/Candy Apple
When: 8
Where: The Crypt
Why: El Paso post-punkers Lesser Care are currently producing one of the most potent blends of shoegaze atmospherics and vulnerable post-punk melancholy played live with a forceful energy suggestive of a youth spent playing in punk and metal bands. Their 2024 album Heel Turn is like that sound but album-wise informed by great hip-hop records of the late 80s with an intro and nice interludes that connect a kind of narrative of survival and reinvention.

Saturday | 03.15
What: flipturn w.Krooked Kings
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: flipturn from Fernandina Beach in Northeastern Florida released its sophomore album Burnout Days in January 2025. The album seems informed by loving reflection on times in one’s life that felt like they lasted forever filled with a kind of vitality even if you spent that time spending one’s moments with a careless abandon as if one’s health and free time wouldn’t ever really run out. But the band doesn’t seem to bemoan this so much as try to reconnect with what made that time special. It’s a record of glimmering atmospheres and a wistful yet exuberant energy that illuminates its raw portraits of everyday life like the musical equivalent Polaroids that take you back to the exact moment and context depicted.

Saturday | 03.15
What: Evan Honer w/Leon Majcen
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Evan Honer is a singer-songwriter whose eclectic style includes bits of acoustic folk, Americana and indie pop in the mix. He got a big boost when his cover, with Julia DiGrazia, of “Jersey Giant” by Tyler Childers went viral after its 2022 release to day garnering over 120 million streams on Spotify. Two years later Honer released his sophomore album Fighting For independently recording in unconventional spaces with friends. The album has a homespun minimalism that puts Honer’s emotionally vibrant vocals in the center with the spare instrumentation sharing space in the mix for a set of songs that feel intimate and worthy of Honer’s poignantly insightful portraits of everyday life and his own confessional explorations of personal struggles and working through the painful moments we all often have to deal with in isolation.

Monday | 03.17
What: Rachel Platten w/Ben Abraham
When: 7
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: Prior to the 2024 release of her latest album I Am Rachel Platten the singer/songwriter hadn’t offered a new album of material since 2017’s Waves. Platten has said that the new album came out of a time experiencing mental health struggles like anxiety, postpartum depression, deep self doubt, the vagaries of having a public presence and the turmoil of leaving one’s major label. The resulting music are the cathartic and vulnerable songs one would hope from an artist who isn’t simply patting herself on the back for having the inner strength to get through those struggles, rather Platten’s songs are filled with a knowing that you don’t conclusively overcome some issues forever because life has a way of challenging you in different ways. Platten shows that one can have some grace and dignity even in the darkest of moments. Her live shows are where Platten shines with an uplifting and at times exultant energy and she delivers her songs real emotional force.

Monday | 03.17
What: Poppy w/kumo 99
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Poppy has been defying easy categorization since early in here career seeming to free associate between metalcore, synth pop and industrial rock and whatever other strands of style help to realize her musical leanings. Her latest album Negative Space sometimes hits as screamo but equally hyperpop and progressive metal. It is paradoxically eclectic and cohesive like if the members of Garbage had been born roughly 30 years later and absorbed then developing musical styles. Sometimes when a band tries to combine too many different musical ideas it’s a mess or it doesn’t work yet Poppy somehow orchestrates it all into a surprisingly effective synthesis especially live where the singer seems to channel that energy into a focused and theatrical performance like an updated version of something from the 90s and more than a cut above a lot of artists drawing upon similar inspirations.

Wednesday | 03.19
What: Russian Circles w/Pelican
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Russian Circles is the Chicago-based post-metal trio that has garnered a bit of a cult following over the past twenty plus years that it’s been crafting its sound and songwriting concepts. Its most recent album was 2022’s Gnosis on which the group experimented with Celtic music tunings and the inclusion of a Moog Taurus synth to enhance the low end. The album while not hailed as among the band’s best nevertheless represents the band coming more fully into its cinematic musical ambitions. Also on the bill is another Chicago band that has made a name for itself with its heavy soundscapes and creative use of repetition, Pelican. The latter is on the verge of releasing its new album Flickering Resonance (out May 16, 2025) so you may get to hear where the group has gone since its excellent 2019 album Nighttime Stories. Earlier in its career the band wrote the early forms of its songs mostly on acoustic guitar to work out the chords and dynamics but since the 2019 record the group has gone for the louder foundation with electric instruments resulting in songs that take even more immediate advantage of the ways those sounds intersect to create unique resonances.

Thursday | 03.20
What: Midwife and Vyva Melinkolya perform Orbweaving w/BleakHeart and Volunteer Coroner
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Midwife and Vyva Melinkolya released the collaborative album Orbweaving in 2023, the product of becoming friends in 2020 and meeting in person in 2021 for a recording residency. The album is a hazy, gauzy set of songs that are about dreams, personal myths, the beauty and horror of the world and getting through a time of extended grief and perilous uncertainty that seems to still be running through the world with no end in sight. The delicacy and vulnerability heard in its songs though is the ability to hang on in spite of these challenges and to navigate it with creative acts and being willing to feel those emotions that threaten to engulf you. The night begins with the ambient/analog synth sounds of Volunteer Coroner and the deep moods and engrossingly gorgeous harmonies of doomy, post-rock dream pop band BleakHeart.

Saturday | 03.22
What: Los Mocochetes, My Blue Heart and The Milk Blossoms
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Los Mocochetes is releasing its new 7” record “Huaraches”/”Sun Will Shine” via Unit E records and celebrating the occasion with this performance. The Chicano/funk band from Denver has been performing uplifting music aimed at turning the social and cultural power structure on its head since the 2010s. My Blue Heart might be described loosely as an art pop band in that its eclectic style is theatrical in presentation and in the way the music is performed but includes elements of blues, funk, jazz, prog and psychedelic rock. The Milk Blossoms is a band that seems to gather day dreams and poignant observations about the peaks and valleys of human emotional experience and crafts them into exquisite and finely honed pop songs that maintain more than a bit of the edges and unravellings that make for music that actually moves you.

Saturday | 03.22
What: Bluebook w/Body and Pleasure Prince
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Bluebook is a brooding yet electrifying dark, art folk band that has changed musical shape and membership for the past 20 years into its current form that comes across like a progressive art rock band with emotionally vibrant vocals and a riveting intensity. Body is a darkwave disco band that sounds like the trio spent a lot of time just listening to a bunch of mid-80s synthpop but updated by late 2000s indie rock. That the band includes Edmund Garthe and Stuart Confer formerly of Ned Garthe Explosion tells you there is a lot of creativity and imagination behind the music but then there’s also Roni Beer who brings her own left field pop energy into the mix. And to round out a fantastic bill is Pleasure Prince who seem to have mastered the art of pop songwriting utilizing real music chops in the vocals and percussion as well as a deep infusion of experimental edge.

Tuesday | 03.25
What: Pom Poko w/Fake Dad and May Be Fern
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Pom Poko from Oslo, Norway released the bright yet introspective album Champion in 2024. Across its eleven songs the band showed the missing links between indiepop, post-punk and Kiwi rock resulting in a unique sound. The way Orions Belte, another Oslo band, seems to have fused jazz, psychedelia, world folk and pop without quite sounding like anyone else either.

Thursday | 03.27
What: Alex Wilcox, Vegan Gore & Vicky Burp, Church Fire and Sell Farm
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Alex Wilcox came up in Texas but spent some time in Austin, Texas and then LA where he worked at Chalice Recordings in production and further refined the techniques and aesthetics of pop and hip-hop which he has subsequently applied to and evolved from in making his own style of glitchcore/experimental electronic dance music. Now based in Berlin is pushing boundaries as a DJ and crafter of cutting edge dance pop. Church Fire just got off tour with Moonpussy so who can say how this show will be except finely honed and maybe with some even more amped up stage antics. Sell Farm hasn’t flexed his industrial ambient music in a while either so catch him at a now not as common live show.

Thursday | 03.27
What: Martha Wainwright w/Brad Barr
When: 6
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Martha Wainwright might have had a bit of a big legacy to live up to as the daughter of Kate McGarrible and Loudon Wainwright III and with her brother being Rufus Wainwright. But Martha came out of the gates, as it were, with the 2005 EP Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole and the title track which is like a response to her father’s manner of writing songs about his family rather than tending to them as people. The EP also established her as a songwriter of note with a passionately expressive voice and command of rhythm guitar inflections to match her singing. In 2025 Wainwright released her new EP 6 Songs, a collection of songs rendered in her signature nuanced and emotionally vibrant vocals and delicate and imaginative guitar accompanied by a touch of psychedelic shimmer.

Friday | 03.28
What: Faetooth w/Iress and Dreadnought
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Faetooth is the Los Angeles-based doomgaze band whose heavy atmospherics pair well with the fantastical lyrics. In moments bordering on dark folk but mostly feral energy and crunchy, crushing riffs with hovering menace to heighten a sense of otherworldliness. Think SubRosa leaning heavier into its Black Sabbath influences. Denver’s own Dreadnought will fit well with that rich atmospherics and science fantasy storytelling but more with touches of classical and orchestral sensibilities informing its dramatic compositions.

Friday | 03.28
What: Advance Base w/”Horse Girl” and Ground Hum
When: 7
Where: Glob
Why: Owen Ashworth is fondly remembered for his project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and its almost outsider songwriter take on lo-fi indiepop. But there was always something endearing about his emotionally open lyrics and tender melodies as well as his unvarnished yet tuneful vocals. When Ashworth retired the project in 2010 with a final tour. But it wasn’t long before he continued making music under the moniker Advance Base and starting his Orindal Records imprint. With the new name Ashworth has delivered entire albums worth of deeply observant and poignant pop songs both melancholic and a celebration of the moments in life that we take for granted but which connect what we might consider the more peak (for good or bad) experiences. In December 2024 he released his latest album, the luminously warm Horrible Occurrences.

Saturday | 03.29
What: Gleemer w/American Culture and Ampule
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Gleemer has been playing in the local scene in Colorado since 2011 but garnered an underground cult following by touring and making a bit of a name for itself far afield. Mixing emo, slowcore and shoegaze before that really became a bigger thing in the past handful of years, Gleemer’s musical instincts manifested most fully with its fifth and latest album End of the Nail (2024). Fans of Sunny Day Real Estate and Death Cab For Cutie will find a lot to like in Gleemer’s blend of grit and atmospheric melodies. American Culture came out of the indiepop underground but its players have real chops and lately have sounded more like they have been immersing themselves in the catalog of The Cure and the better end of early Britpop and C86.

Saturday | 03.29
What: Spencer Sutherland w.Stacey Ryan and Cloe Wilder
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Spencer Sutherland is a pop R&B artist who was already honing his skills as a singer and arranger before appearing on Today in 2017 followed up by being a contestant on the UK edition of The X Factor and then signing to a major label the year after. It did his career no harm appearing in films and TV series. But his 2023 debut album In His Mania and subsequent national tour boosted his musical endeavors some with opening slots from Cloe Wilder also on this tour in support of Sutherland’s 2024 sophomore effort Drama. The new record builds on the singer’s sense of humor as well as reveals an obvious influence from Freddy Mercury. Wilder recently released her latest EP Life’s a Bitch (March 21, 2025). Like her prior output the songs have an immediacy and intimacy built around her breathy vocals and knack for writing stories vivid with images of people, places and the emotional resonances of her experiences. Although only 19 years old, Wilder’s songwriting is confident and has a depth of feeling and nuance of expression more in line with a veteran artist.

Sunday | 03.30
What: Bob Log III, The Black Gloves and The Oldmen
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Bob Log III has been doing his “One Man Band Boom” thing for three decades now performing with a Silvertone archtop guitar and percussion he provides with his feet. All while dressed up like a human cannonball. It’s unvarnished rock and roll played with punk spirit and although a bit of a gimmick it’s one that is entertaining and there is an appeal to the kind of music he’s doing that deconstructs rock and roll just a little while tapping into the spirit of the early era of that music. The Oldmen are a garage punk band that includes former members of Boss 302 so even if the name is a bit of a joke these guys will provide plenty of entertaining stage antics of their own with solid power pop hooks.

Monday | 03.31
What: Amyl and the Sniffers w/Sheer Mag
When: 6
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Amyl and the Sniffers from Melbourne, Australia are one of the most prominent punk bands at this moment. Its sound came out of a pub rock sound but live the group has a joyously ferocious presence with charmingly pointed lyrics. In 2024 the group released its latest album Cartoon Darkness which expanded upon the bands sound with a more focused presentation without losing the unhinged energy the band has made part of its essential appeal. Philadelphia’s Sheer Mag also powerful threads together classic rock’s best instincts and modern punk and power pop. The band’s own exuberant live shows are like an American analog to what the headliner’s are doing though Sheer Mag has been at it a little longer.

Monday | 03.31
What: Decibel Magazine Tour 2025: Mayhem, Mortiis, Imperial Triumphant and New Skeletal Faces
When: 5:30
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Decibel Magazine seems to put together a solid lineup for its tours and headlining this one is the legendary Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. The group’s storied history almost overshadows the music itself. But its iconic sound has been a template for the metal subgenre with sepulchral vocals over hanging atmospherics and headlong pacing. With Attila Csihar fronting the band expect plenty of theatricality and soul shaking vocals. Mortiis is from the black metal world of Norway but under this moniker he is more known for dungeon synth, ambient and what might be described as industrial darkwave. Imperial Triumphant is a more experimental black metal band from New York City whose new album Goldstar is like an avant-garde opera arranged in torrential black metal soundscapes. New Skeletal Faces might seem out of place here even though it fuses black metal guitar sounds and musicianship with death rock era The Cult. Fans of Final Gasp will appreciate what New Skeletal Faces are doing.