So we haven't really had a big name metal band from Colorado since the dated Jag Panzer(what ever happened to Serberus?) but even so, from Boulder down to Colorado Springs, we have one of the better metal scenes in the country. The Angelo's CDs store in Thornton has specialized in metal as long as I've remembered. Down in the Springs is the respectable Pit Magazine always graced by international names in the underground metal scene (not to mention the late Throat Culture magazine out of Denver,) and in Aurora we've got a solid metal bar in the Iliff Park Saloon.

Any establishment that hosts the likes of, say, Deicide (see 'em June 6) and Arsis carries some cred in my mind even if I've heard mixed reviews of the joint from performers.

I was out there last week to see Nemonic. Those remarks I made from hearing their demo? The ones about Rob Sterling not sounding all that at home in his voice? Yeah, forget 'em. Just wipe them from the record. I think I'm just going to blame the mixing on those demo tracks - it put him maybe too far out front of the band. The live sound is more cohesive.

Nemonic isn't a metal band in the strict sense - none of the bands were that night. What we got was a mix of hard rock and nu-metal.

I hate nu-metal. I haven't been able to identify with it since I was a teenager, and even that's something I'd like to live down. The kind of angst you hear in nu-metal isn't all that relevant to my experience and the stilted, stuttered rapping that's par for the course frankly makes me kind of embarrassed for my fellow spawn of suburbia on the whole.

That's why openers Maseneye surprised me. I'm not about to be a convert to the nu, but for what Maseneye do, they're really good at it. The manufactured self-loathing and suburban stabs at street cred and everything else that makes nu-metal so laughably awful? It's not there. Maseneye played a tight set with a versatile sound that worked in the occasional flashy oldschool metal licks, off-kilter tracks like "Intercourse" and a vocal range that could handle melody and beastly growls alike. Can I trade out all the Disturbeds and Three Days Graces in the world for Maseneyes? I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Despite a deep lineup of band-boosters in the crowd, most of the noise for Nemonic seemed to come from the back. That's not bad and that's not good. It just is. It's the kind of band Nemonic is. They're hard rock for the philosophical drinker - the one who sits back and lets the music work its magic while he works out all that troubling "meaning of the universe" stuff. Those meandering guitar lines and occasionally heady lyrical themes are good for about the third or fourth drink in, when the front of the brain can shut the hell up and let the back do a little work. The occasional hookier jam might help, though, to pull us out of the trance now and then.