An Albatross

w/Lobe, Audio Infidels, Black Lodge
Sat Aug 2, 2nd Avenue Pizza, 7 pm, $3.

"Screamo," the next genre giant, has begun leaving teeth marks on the mainstream media, but unfortunately the music doesn't have much bite. In the June 29 issue of the New York Times Magazine, writer Jonathan Dee coined 2003 the "Summer of Screamo"--a label used for the groundswell of bands like the Used, Glassjaw, Thrice, and Thursday, who to me sound as dully rejected and painfully commercial as plain old pathetic emo (only they yell instead of whimper). I did like Dee's quote from Tom Beaujour, the editor of hard-rock mag Revolver, though: "The history of screaming is really just the history of rock getting louder and more outrageous. It's almost like an arms race. What can I do that is the next level of sonic rebellion?"

I agree with that--but really, screamo is about as rebellious as the Hot Topic chain selling skull-and-crossbones patches. There is an arms race for rebellion, always has been; but when I get a video a week from these new "crazy" major-label radio-friendly punk bands, my interest in the mainstream retreats even further. I love the energy and experimental nature of the more difficult avant-hardcore acts--from their unscientific mixtures of so many "unpopular" genres to the sweat-stenched basements, makeshift all-ages venues, and low-entry dives they tend to play in. These bands make music for themselves and for their loyal fans, and it's the wonderfully destructive sound of a more ballsy force of antiestablishment aggression.

The best of the avant-hardcore bands make music so loud, complicated, and adverse to standard song structure that their songs become violent thrusts of noise, the kind of abrasive sonic combustion that has barbed edges and broken angles and doesn't give a fuck about accessibility. The bands inject a lot of extra noise in their experiments, and when they give the banshee wail, it sounds like a vital organ just exploded, with remnants splattering all over the music.

Of these avant-hardcore acts, the Locust, who come through Seattle this week, are probably the closest to becoming a household name (albeit in more adventurous households), and are well-known enough to be called sellouts by purists who hate everything once it has too much label money behind it. Their new record on Anti-, Plague Soundscapes, shows that the Locust's grindcore special effects have tripled: Keyboards buzz the guitars like low-flying fighter planes, ramping up the band's penchant for sounding as manageable as a hive of hornets. This isn't a sellout release--there are no industry-savvy alterations to their acerbic charm, and, if anything, a bigger budget was the Spanish fly that made their disruptive sound more potent.

Philadelphia's An Albatross are another interesting avant-hardcore act coming to Seattle. They just signed to Ace Fu Records (Ex Models), and make the same kind of clipped cyborg-speed constructions as the Locust. Their excellent new record, We Are the Lazer Viking, is an eight-minute race through 11 songs, mashing up metal, grindcore, and prog rock along the way with an analog synth, Farfisa, and the prerequisite rhythm-section swarm. The vocals are more "rabid dog" than the Locust's "rabid insect," and the four-year-old band's tangents into things like whale-mating-style effects add to their eclectic sound.

Both bands (along with a load of others--the Blood Brothers and Racebannon, for example) make the kind of music that could deliver black eyes--not from brute aggression, but via the socially aware types who eat this shit up and move around to its jolted/near-nonexistent rhythms in appropriate weed-whacker fashion. To me, this is where the forward force of punk is really snarling, chained to a rapidly growing indie audience and about to break loose into the (remote) reaches of the mainstream audience's attention span, thanks to percolating label interest, the Internet, and constant touring.

The mainstream can have the "screamo revolution" and all of its safe success. The real raw-throated rebellion pours out in the records and performances of avant-hardcore acts, who spew the truly passionate brand of "emotional punk."

jennifer@thestranger.com