"Basically,we have done eveything that we had ever wanted to do as a band," says Read Yellow's Evan in a Lemming Trial post. "All we ever wanted was to make music for our friends. Fortunately for us, it went beyond just playing parties in Amherst basements. The four of us are in agreement that now is a good time to bow out."

Damien Rice at the Opera House
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $32.50/ $42.50/ $47.50
On-sale Friday, March 2, 2007 at 10:00 am

Ben Gibbard (Death Cab), David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), and Jonathan Rice at the Somerville Theatre
Monday, May 7, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $25.00
On-sale Friday, March 2, 2007 at 10:00 am

Photo by Sisto

Think of last night as the dress rehearsal: it was the show that got added after tonight's sold out, so yeah, the room was only half-full, and Low B cancelled due to the weather in Philly (which somehow didn't prevent the Re-Up Gang from making the trip north from the City of Brotherly Love). The thumbnail description: Clipse running through full versions of nearly every song you'd want to hear (we took a quick smoke break, maybe they did "Hello New World" while we were gone), with Ab-Liva and Sandman bringing a fresh package onstage when the rhyme supply began to run low.

NEMHF 2006 (2006, day 2) (2006, day 3)

The lineup is in for the ninth annual New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, and the big news (other than that the fest has scaled back from three days to two) is that the second day of the festival will function as a 25th birthday party for the legendary Metal Blade label.

Killswitch Engage

Dragonforce

Chimaira

He Is Legend

Killswitch Engage, Dragonforce, Chimaira, and He Is Legend
February 24 at Avalon
Photos (c) Carina Mastrocola

If you flipped through those photos casually, we want you to go back and check out how focussed Dragonforce's beer-through-a-straw game is.

We had this date marked on our calendar like two months ago as the pileup of the first quarter: as just an example of how much crap is going on simultaneously, Frank Smith and Rev. Glasseye managed to schedule farewell-to-Boston gigs (both bands are moving to Austin) without realizing that the other one was doing the same thing on the other side of the river.

Cadence Weapon -- MC, P4K reviewer, remixologist, mp3 blogger, big Bad Religion fan -- signed to Epitaph last week: will he become the Spank Rock of Canada? His Breaking Kayfabe is out in the US (finally) on March 13, to coincide with SXSW buzz-building. That rap-act-with-punk-aesthetic thing? Rollie: "I think I got that."

DOWNLOAD: Brain Failure, "Coming Down to Beijing" (mp3)

Yes, BRAIN FAILURE are from Beijing, not Boston, but we’re making an exception for the Clash of mainland-Chinese punk rock, for three reasons: 1) This has been a second home for the group ever since Dropkick Murphys leader Ken Casey took them under his wing — he produced their US debut, American Dreamer, as well as their half of the new Beijing to Boston, a split EP with Big D and the Kids Table; 2) Their label, Japan’s Bad News Records, just opened an office on Newbury Street; 3) If the bark on verses two and three sounds familiar, that’s because it belongs to none other than ex-Bosstone Dicky Barrett, who comes out of retirement to complain that "This place ain’t the same, the bars are foreclosed/My friends live in the suburbs, there’s no good shows."

IF YOU GO:

• The Bad Plus
  Sunday, February 25
  Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston
  7:30 pm, $25
  617.369.3300

The Bad Plus may do witty covers of "Smells like Teen Spirit," "Heart of Glass," and the theme song from Chariots of Fire, but it's all backed up by muscular playing and a terrific sense of the strange.