The Sacramento three-piece Tera Melos plays that precarious game of trying to balance wildly complicated instrumentals topped with pop melodies and brashly presenting that swirling melee to the public. Some of the bands earlier output is too mathily twisted to be any kind of accessible, but Tera Melos latest full-length, last years Patagonian Rats (released on Sargent House, the label that launched fellow noodlers Maps & Atlases), shows some promising signs of an easier merger between lawless and listenable. Songs like Frozen Zoo and Aped have chant-worthy choruses and bright tones, as well as maniacal guitars riffs and jarring structuresall of which makes them the perfect openers on this tour for the hot goddess of shred, Marnie Stern. With Marnie Stern, Kinski, Dog Shredder. ERIN K. THOMPSON
Tue., March 15, 7:30 p.m., 2011
