Primus at Congress Theatre | Photo by Richard Giraldi

Another band riding the nostalgia train, Primus came trudging into Chicago’s Congress Theatre on Saturday night with a show full of twisted, bottom-heavy shenanigans. Though Primus songs don’t really have any pop tendencies or discernible hooks, their fans are rabid and moshed, head-banged and crowd surfed to every lightning bass flick from lead singer and bassist extraordinaire Les Claypool or jazzy, metallic riffage from vastly underrated guitarist Larry LaLonde. But while Primus’ live show blends carnival freak show antics with funk-metal attitude, it’s the virtuosity of the three band members that really captures the attention.

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The tag of garage rock is getting thrown around much these days. Not without reason as a number of bands have found their muse in the sounds of the Music Machine, the Seeds, the Sonics or any number of bands that once upon a time churned out spastic guitar rock with blatant disregard for a polished sound. Chicago’s Outer Minds are no exception. Except maybe they are. On their self-titled Plustapes debut tape, yes, another tape, Outer Minds channel early Rolling Stones and maybe even a little Syd Barrett fronted Pink Floyd to create four reverb heavy and catchy as all hell songs.

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Chicago’s Mutts aren’t playing around. The first aspect of their new EP, The Tells of Parallels, that truly jumps out from the speakers is its pure heaviness. Heaviness in the static-y production value and heaviness in general attitude. Every instrument on the record is mic’ed up to 11: the drums, the bass, the keys, the guitar. Actually, scratch that last one. The trio actually forgoes the guitar and instead relies on a dirty, mud-soaked key tone to drive the melodies. It’s saying something that a band can reach the big rock n’ roll moments of current major acts like Queens Of The Stone Age or the Dead Weather without an axe, but Mutts do and quite effortlessly at that.

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Verma’s self-titled debut is a tough egg to crack. Released by the ever popular Plustapes label, it does prove that Verma are another great psych/krautrock band in the ever expanding pool of Chicago’s psych/krautrock scene. The five songs that make up the tape range from Hawkwind-like spacey to more heavy drone to downright heavy heavy. The fact that they chose to record live to tape is perhaps the one real drawback here as the sound is muffled and in the red distorted more often than not. Upon first listen, it’s hard to tell how to feel about the sound, but oddly enough after a few more, it may actually add something.

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Chicago’s Suns have pretty much burst onto our local scene in a big way. Folks still talk about their January debut at the Metro. I suppose when your band is comprised of members of other formerly well known bands such as Wax On Radio and Blame Twilight you’ve got a built in buzz. Roughly eight months (Actually six, but I received the album a few months late) after their forming, Suns have released a double EP. This may sound odd because you might think “isn’t a double EP just a full-length?”, and you wouldn’t be a fool for asking such a question. But, The Howl and The Many and Close Calls In The U.S. Space Program are different enough that I can see why they chose to release them this way.

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It would be a surprise if Chicago’s own California Wives are still unsigned in the near future. Coming off of an impressive set at the Wicker Park festival this summer, the band’s new five song EP, Affair, is subtle yet catchy. It’s the kind of EP you listen to eight times in a row, not for a specific song, or a particular verse. It’s because all five songs are just well done.

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Bitchin Bajas is the side project of Cave‘s Cooper Crane. There are similarities between the two bands, mostly in that they both mine 70′s Krautrock. But on their debut, Tones/Zones, Bitchin Bajas forgo Cave’s Can-like rhythms for more Tangerine Dream/Brian Eno/Cluster-like keyboard ambiance. And while Cave, despite their influences, still sound mostly modern, Bitchin Bajas do not. In fact, if one picked this album up without knowing a thing about it, they might not know it was produced over 30 years after the above mentioned artist’s heyday, and that’s a good thing.

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