Stryper ~ Sunday, November 22
Mark Driscoll, controversial cool-guy pastor of Mars Hill Church, plays guitar. Pretty hip, right? But how many of you Mars Hill-ian youngsters out there know about Stryper, the wildly popular Christian hard-rock band from the '80s? Like Driscoll, Stryper looked and sounded like the era's secular favorites, but preached a message of salvation. Truly ahead of their time, they threw copies of the New Testament to the audience and embraced "777" as their trademark in opposition to metal's ubiquitous "Number of the Beast." They sang lyrics such as "Speak of the devil/He's no friend of mine" and referenced Isaiah 53:5 in their name and on their album covers. Having disbanded in the '90s, they're back celebrating their 25th anniversary with not only a tour, but a brand new album, Murder by Pride. Thank you, Holy Spirit! With Flight Patterns, Manic Drive. El Corazon, 109 Eastlake Ave. E., 381-3094. 7 p.m. $25 adv./$30 DOS. All ages. BRIAN J. BARR
David McClister
Those Darlins have got “darling” down to a science.
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The Hidden Cameras ~ Monday, July 23
Playing a sort of loping, ecstatic folk-pop, Toronto's Hidden Cameras have always resisted firm contours. They're unpredictable as a rule, with leader Joel Gibb the constant in a shifting lineup that can swell to great numbers. The band's fifth album, Origin:Orphan, begins with a long wash of ambience; Gibb's voice finally enters to mingle with a weirdly tuned violin, suspenseful percussion, and yelps escaping from the backdrop. It's a grand announcement of ambition, not that the Hidden Cameras were ever slackers. Yet that unwieldy first song gives way to the jumpy, synth-dipped "In the NA," an effortless single in line with such previous triumphs as "Ban Marriage," "I Believe in the Good of Life," and "Awoo." Sex and religion have long competed for attention in Gibb's lyrics, and parts of "Kingdom Come" and "He Falls to Me" aren't easy to assign to one realm or the other. But this album seems more about coalescing sounds than words, and that often translates to a prolonged head rush. With Gentleman Reg. The Triple Door, 216 Union St., 838-4333. 7:30 p.m. $15 adv./ $18 DOS. All ages. DOUG WALLEN
The Books ~ Tuesday, November 24
The Books has kept active over the past four years—touring and releasing a DVD as well as composing elevator music for France's Ministry of Culture—but is taking its sweet time making a new album. The follow-up to 2005's Lost and Safe is said to be nearly finished, and the process has been understandably laborious—Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong famously take recycling to a whole new level by combing thrift stores for discarded cassettes to be culled and sampled in their music (all of which is mixed and mastered on their home PCs). Live performances are synched with a backdrop of videotape projections, which are of course more secondhand finds. The Books' music is thus less a collection of songs and more a group of adventurous, overarching sound-and-speech collages, structured with mellifluous cello and guitar. Zammuto's vocals may have to share face time with speech clips of Einstein and Auden, but are enticingly silky when they do appear. The combination of all these effects is euphonic and truly otherworldly—it's the music you hear in your dreams. The Triple Door, 216 Union St., 838-4333. 7 (all ages) & 9:30 p.m. $15. E. THOMPSON
Municipal Waste ~ Tuesday, November 24
Of all the bands currently riding the "New Wave of Thrash Revival"—Warbringer, Bonded by Blood, Evile, and others—Virginia Beach's Municipal Waste is not only the best but the most broadly popular. And it's easy to understand why; beyond the chunky, metronomic efficiency of guitarist Ryan Waste's riffs and Tony Foresta's in-your-face crossover vocals, Municipal Waste boasts a wide-ranging and authentic grasp on the past two decades of hardcore and metal, and puts all that's good about them into recordings and performances. Take for example the band's tour mates: legendary SoCal crustcore punks Phobia, legendary Seattle crossover thrashers The Accused, and Canadian power-metal revivalists Cauldron (who, swear to God, have a song called "Chained Up in Chains" that they introduce with "This is about your girlfriend"...honestly, I'm not sure they're not a performance-art act, they're so awesome). Each of those bands plays into their niches beautifully; Municipal Waste plays into all of them...drunkenly. El Corazon, 109 Eastlake Ave. E., 381-3094. 7 p.m. $13 adv./$15 DOS. All ages. JASON FERGUSON
