It’s a long way from rain-drenched Manchester to sun-baked Texas. For Peter Hook, source of the driving and defining bass lines of Joy Division and New Order, playing in America has always been a case of “very more-ish.” He and his new band the Light perform tonight at the Belmont.

It’s still nearly three months until Housecore Horror, the new fusion horror film/heavy metal festival from the twisted mind of Phil Anselmo, comes ripping, but Austin’s newest gathering of dark minds just unleashed its full music schedule.

For Merle Haggard, home’s only a honky-tonk away. The original country outlaw, now 76, has spent the better part of the past decade on the road, conducting another never-ending tour that’s overcome double pneumonia, diverticulitis, and much more. Friday night he pulled into the historic Gruene Hall in New Braunfels.

If the music stages at the Housecore Horror Film Festival couldn't possibly get any more crowded, time to make more room. Seminal New York black metal crew Suffocation will be performing, complete with founding vocalist Frank Mullen.

It may call itself the Housecore Horror Film Festival, but with Pantera main man Phil Anselmo and metalsucks.net writer Corey Mitchell at the helm, they were also promising a superheavy metal lineup, Oct. 24-27. Today, they delivered with a vengeance.

Dear drunk guy standing at the back of Red 7 yelling “pussies” at Rival Mob. Why were you even there?

UK grindcore innovators Bolt Thrower specialize in mayhem, warfare, and violence. A broken P.A. wasn’t about to derail their plans to conquer Chaos in Tejas Friday night.

There’s a fine line between studied artistic apathy and the real deal, and these heavy heavy roarers fell across and into the divide. The Nottingham UK quartet fuses the bad trip and mellow sides of psych, and sometimes that works, but even under the shade of the Levitation tent, daylight exposed all the welds.

It’s a simple equation: Pysch plus rain equals Goth.