Saturday night was a night of epic guitar rock from two bands whose heydays are separated by nearly a decade. Promising, young upstarts Surfer Blood and grizzled, journeymen …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead took over the Bottom Lounge with a blitzkrieg of heavy riffs, crazy fills, and extended solos.

Above you can watch Surfer Blood perform the set-closing, barnburner “Anchorage” off their debut LP Astro Coast. Check it out: At about 5:00 lead singer John Paul Pitts vogues to the camera for me and at 6:10 he crowd surfs while playing a solo. Rock hasn’t felt this good since Lenny Kravitz covered “American Woman.”

Overall, the young men from West Palm Beach played a potent and entertaining set. Hearing new material —some of which was pretty inspired— was nice after burning out on the record and they delivered the hits with a gut-punching intensity that made them fresh again.

Overall, I give Surfer Blood 4 out of 5 sashaying John Paul Pitts.

Trail of Dead are, unsurprisingly, the same band you saw at your campus fun night in ’02 when they were touring on the now ‘legendary’ Source Tags & Codes. They still perform balls-out, blistering guitar rock; band members still swap drum duties like it’s a game of musical chairs; and they still let side man Jason Reece play a few of his numbers for better or worse.

But as powerful as their live performance is, there is no amount of distortion and intensity that will change the fact that they lack hooks and their best material was written at a time when ‘N Sync still put out hits. The crowd gave warm, this-is-rock-n’-roll responses to their most sonically suffocating post-Source Tags output, but it wasn’t until lead man Conrad Keely conceded the song “How Near How Far” from that record that they really erupted. Have a listen for yourself:

Ah, still good after all these years. I do give them credit for being able to lob that one out past the stadium walls. Thanks for the nostalgia, Conrad. I give Trail of Dead 3 out of 5 ringing death knells.

Finally, the self-described “stonegaze” band True Widow from Texas opened. As the bro next to me eloquently put it: “they had a few good minutes up there.” There were some promising guitar parts and melodies but far too many slow, uninspired four-chord drones. Leave it to the Melvins, guys. My advice: edit down all pseudo-metal segments or, better yet, just become a pop band. I give True Widow 1 out of 5 free lectures about the genius of “Bohemian Like You” by The Dandy Warhols. Thanks for playing.