RVA Shows You Must See This Week: July 5 – July 11
FEATURED SHOW
Friday, July 7, 7 PM
Eat Your Heart Out Tour, feat. Johnny Ciggs, Rah Scrilla, Mike Live, C. Shreve The Professor, Kai Fortyfive, Cliff Beechwood, Shaw Calhoune, Cynical Minded, Profound79, Fan Ran @ RVA Boombox – $10 (order tickets HERE)
Y’all surely know by now that I spend a lot of time monitoring the internet and social media for any news of upcoming live performances here in Richmond. I’ve learned that, while there is some variety from week to week, mostly there are a couple dozen or so spots in this town to find decent live music. So believe me, when a new spot I’ve never heard of before starts showing up on my radar, I’ve got to investigate. That’s why I recently dug into what was going on with RVA Boombox, a new spot off an alley on W. Cary St that has hosted a few hip hop shows in the last month or two. My first thought: was this some illegal spot that just didn’t know enough not to post its address on the internet? I don’t write about places like that, because I don’t believe in snitching. But after doing some research, I think RVA Boombox is a legit business that I am NOT going to get shut down by writing about it. Cross your fingers for me.
Shows are kind of a side thing for RVA Boombox anyway — it’s mainly an internet-only hip hop radio station that plays a lot of local stuff, mixing local sensations like Fly Anakin and up-and-comers like Monday Night in with nationally known folks like Freddie Gibbs and Benny The Butcher. They refer to themselves as WRBX, though in reality those are the call letters of a gospel station in South Georgia, but whatever — pretty much everyone has an internet connection on their phone, so you can listen to this “station” anywhere. And if you dig hip hop, it’s definitely worth your time — better than any other local station, that’s for sure. And they bring that same level of quality to the shows they put on in their event space, booking star-studded locally focused hip hop nights that also feature excellent out-of-town acts who might not have gotten a local show otherwise.
That’s actually a good description of the show they’re throwing this Friday night, which pairs several highly talented veterans from the Gritty City Records with several artists from the northeast currently on an extended jaunt across the east coast, known as the Eat Your Heart Out Tour. There’s NYC’s Kai Fortyfive, who combines strong rhyme skills with sensitive, soulful sounds on his Silky Joints EPs. Maryland artist Shaw Calhoune brings a jazzy feel with lyrical skills and a prolific approach — he’s already released two EPs since the start of 2023. Cliff Beechwood, from parts unknown (I mean I literally don’t know where he’s from) brings some rough-voiced styles and boom-bap beats. NC rapper C. Shreve The Professor brings some of that MF Doom/Pharaoh Monche flavor on his 2022 album, Must Be The D.R.U.G.S. And finally, Cynical Minded has a spooky approach on his LP, Attack On Titan, that might connect with heads who enjoyed early Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep. As for the local talent, I don’t feel like I should even need to explain to you the sheer brilliance of the Gritty City roster, from label founder and rhymer extraordinaire Johnny Ciggs and veteran Richmond MC Rah Scrilla (aka the Pyrex Don) to beatmaking geniuses and Gritty City secret weapons Fan Ran and Profound79. When they’re on the bill, you’re gonna hear some great shit. Enough said — show up at this new spot this Friday night. It’s gonna be hot, and not just because it’s July.
Wednesday, July 5, 6 PM
The Dirty Nil, Daniel Romano’s Outfit, Bagged @ Richmond Music Hall at Capital Ale House – $18 in advance, $22 day of show (order tickets HERE)
I know these days we all hear way more about electronic music, experimental indie, and such, but if you ask my middle-aged ass, good old-fashioned catchy rock n’ roll never goes out of style. At the risk of sounding like one of my uncles on Facebook, I’d still rather hear catchy choruses fueled by loud guitars and pounding drums than almost anything else (share if you agree, amirite?). That’s why I for one am stoked to see The Dirty Nil coming through town on this very night. These guys have caught my attention before with baller moves like naming their 2021 LP Fuck Art, but I didn’t properly investigate what they had to offer until earlier this year when they released their latest LP, Free Rein To Passions. In a time when I spend too many hours worrying about whether I can afford the electricity I’m using to power my laptop while I write this column, it’s truly great to hear a record full of tunes guaranteed to put a smile on your face, that immediately make you want to go jump in your car, roll down the windows, crank the volume as loud as it’ll go, and drive top speed away from work with the sun shining down on you as the wind blows through your hair. This is that record. This is that band. You need the Dirty Nil in your life.
They’re joined on this gig by Daniel Romano’s Outfit, a band I last talked about when they came through Richmond last summer. Since then, they’ve released a truly weird two-song, 33-minute LP called La Luna. However, it’s still their 2021 LP, Cobra Poems, that feels like it’ll most accurately represent what you’ll get when you see Romano and his Outfit live. It’s got that swinging, jangling rock n’ roll feel that you hear when you go back and listen to old punk bands from the 70s, before things got too heavy or fast. If you like the idea of hearing Marquee Moon-era Television with a slightly elevated country influence, you’re sure to appreciate what Daniel Romano’s Outfit have to offer you. Opening this whole thing up will be local duo Bagged, a guitar-drums duo that makes up for any missing low-end in their sound with a great excess of furious energy, as demonstrated on their 2020 EP, Mourning Hike. Basically, this show’s gonna be filled from beginning to end with catchy rock n’ roll guaranteed to lift your spirits. Who couldn’t use a big dose of that right now?
Thursday, July 6, 6:30 PM
Mouthbreather, Terror Cell, Slaat @ Another Round Bar And Grill – $15
OK let me start by getting one thing out in the open immediately: Richmond, this is not a reunited lineup of late-00s Richmond post-hardcore group Mouthbreather. The band called Mouthbreather playing at Another Round Bar And Grill on Thursday night is completely unaffiliated with the Mouthbreather we all remember from such hits as “I Don’t Work In Restaurants For The Food” and “The Night That Richmond Died.” Instead, this is a band from Lowell, Massachusetts (previously best known as Jack Kerouac’s birthplace) who’ve only been around for six or seven years, which means they got together years after the Richmond band broke up. And while they don’t sound much like Richmond’s dear departed Mouthbreather, they are pretty goddamn great in their own right.
Specifically, Mouthbreather are a hard-hitting metalcore act with plenty of panic chords and mosh parts, some truly maniacal vocals, and an undeniable resemblance to great metalcore acts of the 00s like The Red Chord and Curl Up And Die — if those bands turned the chaos down and the mosh up. This makes them a really good fit for Richmond’s Terror Cell, with whom they’ll be sharing this bill. Like Mouthbreather, Terror Cell have a sound that seems capable of bursting into whirling chaos at any moment. That said, Terror Cell are way more interested in pounding you over the head with plenty of brutal mosh riffs. With local ragers Slaat rounding out the bill and adding plenty of heavy hardcore energy of their own to the proceedings, this whole show is sure to be off the chain. Get ready to bang your head and mosh your butt off.
Friday, July 7, 9 PM
Ten Pound Snail, The Saturn Death Cult, Wrong Worshippers @ The Camel – $12 in advance, $15 day of show (order tickets HERE)
Back in the early days of the pandemic, when any opportunity to see in-person live music felt impossibly far away, I did some prognosticating with my friends about how the live music scene would change in the post-pandemic era. I suggested that residencies would become more of a thing, and local scenes would focus more closely on themselves since long tours would be uncertain endeavors for quite a while. While the fact that my prophecy sorta came true has been a mixed blessing at best, I do appreciate the positive aspects of it, and one of the most positive I can think of is residencies involving local bands playing the same night every week for a month, or every month for a year, or whatever. This is Ten Pound Snail’s seventh show as part of their yearlong First Friday residency at The Camel, and while not all of these shows have received coverage in this column, it’s been nice knowing that they’re there if ever the need arises.
I mean, let’s be clear — whether I’ve recommended it or not in any given month, you’re never gonna go wrong seeing Ten Pound Snail at the Camel on this or any First Friday. This band’s entertaining mix of prog-psych musical approaches and indie melodies has made their music some of the more interesting sounds to come out of Richmond since the pandemic, and their album Tabula Rasa, released five days into the new year, has been a highlight of Richmond music in 2023. So you certainly know you’re going to get a great set from them every First Friday. Plus, I always wanna know what Holden is wearing — they’re a fucking fashion plate, for real. And of course, the different opening acts that have graced the Ten Pound Snail shows we’ve had so far this year have all been excellent, with this show being no exception. The Saturn Death Cult are occupying the middle slot on this bill, and recently expanded on the moody heaviness they put forth on 2022’s Information Age Doomsday with a sludgy new single, “Muck.” As for Wrong Worshippers, their recent single “Not Your Pawns” (premiered here on The Auricular a couple months ago) show that this teenage bass-drum punk duo back their political rage with some thick, frantic punk grooves. What’s not to love about that? This one’s gonna be rad — don’t miss out.
Saturday, July 8, 8 PM
Serqet, Hot Lava, Russell Lacy @ Fuzzy Cactus – $10?
I love it when bands I’d thought of as having faded into the past come back to life, and this show presents us with not one but two examples of this. At the top of the bill is Serqet, an intriguing group with a sound that’s tough to describe to those who aren’t already conversant with the terms thrown around in certain niche underground scenes. If me telling you they bring strong elements of classic peace-punk and darkwave works for you, great — you can skip to the next paragraph. If you don’t know about these genres, though, I guess the best way I could explain Serqet to you is to say that they make melodic but dark music with postpunk elements mingling with the melodies of 80s UK gothic pop — maybe a bit of a Joy Division vibe mixed with Siouxsie and The Banshees? Serqet released a demo tape in 2017 and an excellent two-song EP back in 2018, but over the past several years, they’ve played less than a dozen shows. Thankfully, something like six of them have been since last fall, so if anything it seems that they’re ramping back up. Could new music be on the horizon? Serqet’s significant cult following around Richmond surely hope so. In the meantime, we should just enjoy that they’re playing shows again, starting with this one Saturday night at Fuzzy Cactus.
They’re joined by another buzzworthy local band that disappeared for quite a bit longer. After releasing an album on Bar/None Records (original indie label of They Might Be Giants), the bouncy indie-pop project known as Hot Lava went into an indefinite hiatus that didn’t end until about six months ago. It’s certainly great to have them back on the scene, but I do wonder if some younger denizens of the Richmond music underground have forgotten about them — or maybe even never heard about them at all. It’d be unfortunate for them to remain forgotten; the passel of catchy tunes on 2008’s Lavalogy (which is still out there on streaming, waiting for you to rediscover it) constitute plenty of evidence that Hot Lava were — and are — a great band whose sets are sure to keep you smiling and dancing throughout. We can certainly hope that they’ve returned from their long hiatus with some great new tunes too, but damn — at this point, I think everyone who remembers them would agree that playing a set full of songs we know and love would be just as great. This show will start with a set from Virginia Moonwalker main man and veteran local indie/alt-country/Americana musician Russell Lacy, ensuring that the good tunes will start from the very beginning of this one. Get stoked.
Sunday, July 9, 2 PM
Punks For Presents Christmas In July, feat. Motley Scrooge, Rock You Like A Candycane, Rocket Queen, High Voltage @ Hardywood – $10
Punks For Presents, that long-running charity group who gets together each holiday season to provide toys to children in local hospitals, have surely risen to the level of a Richmond institution by now. For something like the past decade, they’ve been organizing live performances featuring talented local musicians coming together to throw benefit performances featuring tribute bands with a Christmas twist. While there are a few mainstays — two of them, legendary local Guns N’ Roses tribute act Rocket Queen and local AC/DC invokers High Voltage, are on this very bill — you often have no idea what you’re going to get, which musicians from better-known local bands will take part, and how straightforwardly they’ll do their particular tribute act. But you can always be sure that you’ll have a lot of fun seeing whatever Punks For Presents brings to you.
This Sunday afternoon at Hardywood, the Punks For Presents folks bring you Christmas In July, a mid-year party they’ve been throwing in recent years to tide over those of us who don’t want to go a year between doses of festive tribute acts. I imagine it also helps them cover costs they incur early in the season, when no one is thinking about Christmas charities yet but they’ve already got costs to cover in order to have another successful holiday season. So yeah, helping Punks For Presents continue to do what they do at top levels is a great reason to go to this show. But an even better reason is that there’s not much of a better way to spend a hot summer Sunday afternoon than rocking out to local guitar-slingers paying tribute to a variety of glam metal’s best and brightest. In addition to previously discussed mainstays Rocket Queen and High Voltage — who are well-known as top-level tribute acts — this year brings us sets from Motley Scrooge, who’ll be kickstarting the Christmas joy with a set of Motley Crue covers; and from Rock You Like A Candycane, a Scorpions tribute act who I can only hope will dig deep and avoid the sentimentality of “Winds Of Change” in favor of now-obscure metal classics like “Blackout.” Only way to know for sure which songs they’ll pick, though (and who will be actually playing them — guaranteed it’ll be at least some people you’ve seen play in other bands around town), is to show up at Hardywood this afternoon. Do it and make your post-July Fourth weekend one to remember just like you did with your pre-July Fourth weekend.
Monday, July 10, 7 PM
Liturgy, HIRS Collective, .gif From God @ Richmond Music Hall at Capital Ale House – $20 (order tickets HERE)
Liturgy have had quite the career over their 15 years or so as a band. Beginning as a rip-roaring post-screamo twist on American black metal, they started expanding their sound beyond those narrow boundaries almost immediately — sometimes in ways that alienated fans who wanted more straightforward blast-beat mayhem. I admit the glitchy electronic touches that started to show up in their sound with 2015’s The Ark Work alienated me for a bit. These days, though, I’m glad I stuck with them — their recently released sixth album, 93696, is by no means a straightforward metal release, but founder and frontwoman Haela Hunt-Hendrix has retained the original building blocks of Liturgy’s sound while expanding on them to integrate classical music elements, electronic experimentation, and complex songwriting techniques. The result is an album full of the same raging chaos that made 2009 debut Renihilation such a powerful opening statement, even as it creates a breathtakingly original sound unlike anything else you can hear within or outside of the world of metal.
All of this is to say that, when Liturgy come to Richmond Music Hall this Monday night, you should be sure you’re there to see them, regardless of how difficult your Monday has been. It’s even more important because, in addition to what’s sure to be an incredible performance from Liturgy, you’ll get two other equally brilliant bands coming from the queer chaotic metal/hardcore tradition. First, there’s Philadelphia’s HIRS Collective, who recently released a brilliant new album of their own, We’re Still Here. As on previous LPs, this collection of a dozen and a half or so tunes finds them again integrating their original grindcore/power-violence sound with aspects drawn from all sorts of far-flung genres. They also brought in a ton of well-known guests from across the underground music scene, but since they’re a collective, it’s hard to know who exactly will show up to play their set on Monday night. You can be sure it’ll blow you entirely out of your shoes though, so lace up those Doc Martens tight. The evening opens with a performance by local heroes .gif From God, who continue to demonstrate their grind-chaos powers on recent EP Digital Red — and with a whole bunch of incredible local shows, of course. If these guys are just the openers, you know this show is gonna be huge. So yeah — get there.
Tuesday, July 11, 7 PM
Outta Pocket, Torment, Victim Of Suffering, Cataract @ The Camel – $10 (order tickets HERE)
It’s Tuesday night, and the feeling’s right — time to get down and dirty with some seriously heavy hardcore action over at The Camel. Outta Pocket comes to Richmond all the way from California, where they came together during the darkest days of the pandemic and blew everyone away with the powerful beatdown energy of their early demos. Mixing together elements of death metal, modern hardcore, and mosh-heavy beatdown sounds, the main element that comes through on 2021’s Purest Pain is toughness. The band is about to follow that up with an EP called Waste Of A Man. As I write this, only two songs from the EP are available for listening, but they make clear that metallic hardcore with an emphasis on super-heavy breakdowns is still what Outta Pocket are all about.
Waste Of A Man actually comes out on Friday, so by the time they get to The Camel on Tuesday, you’ll have had plenty of time to familiarize yourself with all seven songs from it. Expect heavy pit action, serious singalongs, and general hardcore mayhem from their performance. And it seems pretty reasonable to expect that from the entire night, honestly, since the three Virginia bands on this bill are also choice purveyors of metallic hardcore heaviness. Torment is at the top of that list, and longtime readers of this column should know I’m a big fan of this band’s frantic take on metallic hardcore. Expect their set to get every bit as crazy as Outta Pocket’s, because I assure you it will happen. As for Victim Of Suffering, their super-heavy moshcore sound fits right in on this bill, and you can expect them to bring more than their share of rage to this evening. I don’t know as much about Tidewater-based openers Cataract, because they only have one song online, but if that three-minute ripper is any indication, they should start the evening off with a set every bit as heavy and brutal as the rest. Get your Tuesday night mosh on, folks — go to this show.
Email me if you’ve got any tips for me about upcoming shows (that take place after the week this column covers -– this week’s column has obviously already been written): rvamustseeshows@gmail.com
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