Cock E.S.P. 5/9, Fireside Bowl There are folks spending a lot of money to convince us that the logical endpoint of indie rock is a market glut of plodding, vaguely tormented riff rockers. But in small dumpy rooms everywhere, the idiom is getting a real Viking funeral from noise artists, many taking their cues from the Japanese masters, chewing up the music and joyfully spitting back the debris. Minneapolis’s Cock E.S.P., which is usually Emil Hagstrom and Matt St. Germain, crams smutty, snotty manifestos into nasty, brutish, short sets; having witnessed their aborted invasion of the stage at an Empty Bottle noise fest last year, I recommend safety goggles, earplugs, and punctuality.
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Los Crudos 5/9, University of Chicago, Ida Noyes Hall Pilsen’s Los Crudos have probably been Chicago’s best hardcore band for a good five years now–an intense, high-energy outfit that never stoops to games of more-oppressed-than-thou. The fact that their lyrics are in Spanish is a delight to a good number of their fans and no barrier to appreciation by the rest: English translations are provided on the lyric sheets, and besides, anyone who claims they can figure out hardcore lyrics in any language just by listening is lying. Hardcore is as hardcore does, and Los Crudos are donating their energies here to benefit the legal fund for organizer Fred Hampton Jr., the son of slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, who’s doing 18 years on a questionable charge of “racially motivated” arson. My Lai opens and the Make-Up headlines.
FUEL 5/12, METRO Why do these nice Pennsylvania boys look so grim on the back of their Sony 550 debut, Sunburn? Perhaps they’re staring down all those industry weasels who insist on calling what they do “alternative” when they just want to call it “rock.” How brave they must be, what a powerful, ballsy band they must be, standing firm in the face of the Man, who wants to package them, label them, restrain their youthful passion for Alice in Chains, and call what they do “shinola” when we all know it’s shit.
