Critic's Pick: Sourtooth w/More Weight, Good Samaritan & Knifey

The conventional summer jam is groovy and lightweight, perfect for kicking back with a beverage or singing along with the windows down on a road trip. If you’re looking for something that’s the opposite of what I just described this season, catching this all-local bill just might help you find it. Topping the lineup is post-hardcore outfit Sour Tooth, whose 2025 album Bruxism (that’s a technical term for grinding your teeth) blends songs of emotional turmoil with a heavy and abrasive but not-sluggish sound, which brings to mind early Jesus Lizard. More Weight describes themselves as “angry shoegaze,” and I hear a lot of the best stuff from ’90s and Aughts hard rock in their March EP The Thing That Survives. There was a lot that I found plain boring in how nu metal brought heavy music and hip-hop together, but I might have had a different assessment if Good Samaritan had been around then. I’ve only experienced Knifey, the band rounding out the evening, via clips of their live show posted to Instagram — but what I’ve seen and heard of their hardcore-meets-New Wave style and the controlled chaos of their show has put them at the top of my list to see ASAP. 

8 p.m. at The East Room

2412 Gallatin Ave.