Last Thursday at the Comet, much-buzzed-about band Tit Pig (if you're sick of hearing about them, don't worry, they're taking a few months off to record) unleashed a half hour or so of screaming hardcore so fun and vital that it actually has me giving half a shit about the aggro genre for the first time in years.

Sean "The Prawn" Evoy is an ideal frontman for a hardcore band. Before Tit Pig, the last time he was in The Stranger, he was boasting about how he carries a knife when he goes to Goodwill (don't let the tough talk fool you, he's just a big ol' clotheshorse). Evoy doesn't "have a mouth on him," he's just all mouth. It's probably for the best that his, uh, singing comes out as an unintelligible series of throat-scraping screams, squeals, and croaks, because he's almost certainly talking some nasty, offensive shit in there. Perhaps his between-song banter is some indication (although the first thing out of Evoy's mouth was the Mr. Show phrase "Fuck yeah, that wide," which might also give some hint about the band's sense of humor): "All right, motherfuckers, it's time to knuckle up. Let's get fucking nuts, motherfuckers." "I can't hear myself at all, just—whatever, fuck it, fucking shit." "It's not dirty enough for me. I need you guys to do something. Someone take a shit on the floor." "Break your fucking legs, let's get gross." "Spill some fucking blood. Somebody get their head split open, I'm getting bored."

To their credit, the crowd responded to Evoy's hectoring with enthusiastic slam dancing and omnidirectional volleys of beer cans. Evoy, quickly shirtless and showing off his garish chest tattoo, responded in kind, stalking through the crowd and shoving audience members. The dude from the nearby hot-dog stand upturned a small trash can onstage. There was a cardboard box in the pit, tripping people up; eventually, it wound up around the drummer's shoulders, like the human/garbage version of one of those dog cones. The songs were short, fast, and hard, the rhythm martial and unrelenting, the guitarist (dreadlocked Willy Nilz from Wildildlife) alternating from distorted chords to fast, one-handed fret-tapping that left his right hand free for throwing metal horns or, better yet, pointing at his own finger-tapping left hand.

The drummer also got in some good banter. Introducing a song called "Cruising," named, one assumes, for the graphic gaysploitation Al Pacino film, he said, "I want to say I'm so happy to see some big bears here tonight, and if any of you guys wanna take me home and abuse me tonight, I'm up for grabs. The next one's called 'Cruising,' and it goes out to all the bears and it's straight from my heart and I'm dead serious." To which Evoy replied, "We got a limp wrist in here tonight."

Tit Pig are eager provocateurs (see also their butthole-fisting T-shirt), but Evoy's between-song gripes about boredom and his repeated calls for more extreme action raise a niggling question: How filthy does the slam dancing and the shit talk have to be for this stuff to shock us anymore? If anyone in Seattle's gonna find out, it'll be Tit Pig. recommended