Believe it or not, metal in North Texas does not begin and end with Pantera. For one thing, there’s, um, Bloodrock. For another, there’s … uh … Speedealer.
OK, so maybe North Texas’ veins are a little iron-deficient. But I bet if we shift our focus from metal bands that hit the national stage to simply bad-ass metal bands, we could name a few names worth talking about. No doubt atop the heap would be Gammacide, a thrash-metal group for whom old-school scenesters would fall on their Charvel axes. The band, according to local lore, used to regularly pack Joe’s Garage, a long-dead but beloved Fort Worth metal institution.
Darrin Kobetich, whose old band Hammer Witch often opened for Gammacide, says the headliners were “the cream of the crop, locally for the genre, back in the day – and you know I’m a fucking music snob.” The band, according to frontman/guitarist Rick Perry (no, not that Rick Perry), is planning to commence a 20-year anniversary Texas tour this summer. Four dates, here at the Aardvark and in Austin, Houston, and Dallas, are already booked. Now that Gammacide’s type of music is experiencing a resurgence of sorts, interest in the band is at a new high.
The quintet’s lone recording, the now 16-year-old Victims of Science, has been recently re-issued and picked up for distribution in South America and Europe, two pretty large swaths of the globe and ones whose citizens enjoy the occasional head-bang. Gammacide is also writing new material for a possible album. While we don’t know why the boys split 12 years ago, we do know that last year is when they got back together. With the exception of deceased bassist Eric Roy, all of the original members are on board. The two additional Victim tracks were penned after the reunion. Visit www.gammacide.com.
… Blues-rock usually doesn’t sit well with me. The likely reason: Most of the blues-rock I hear seems either dated or is exceedingly generic. Locals Standard Transmission manage to be both bluesy and rockish yet somehow neither. The rhythms skip, jive, and funk-out, the guitar pings and pongs a la Jerry Garcia, and the harmonica can be downright scary. I guess the best way to describe the sound would be pop-blues. (Crazy, I know.) Help the octet celebrate the release of its new c.d., Water’s Edge, this Saturday at The Moon, 2911 W. Berry St. (817-926-9600).
… I have a question: What is it with new local moody indie-rockers and ancient mythology? You may remember a couple of weeks ago I told you about Valhalla (the word for heaven, according to Norse legend, for golden warriors slain – gloriously – in battle), a band that’s not just good but that carries the seal of approval from two of Cowtown’s hottest, youngest, indie-rockingest thangs – Black Tie Dynasty and The Burning Hotels. Well, there’s another similar-sounding band out now, and its name? Myths and Legends. WTF? Anyway, the quartet strikes a curious middle ground between Pavement-ian rawness, Killers-ish sparkle, and Radiohead-y dissonance. M-and-L are so new, they don’t even have as many MySpace friends as I do! (Just kidding. They do. Everybody does.) Visit
www.myspace.com/mythsand
legendssound.
Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.
