Prey for Sleep larynx peel Hunter Townsend emailed us about the Texas Metal Collective, banding together tonight and tomorrow at the Dirty Dog for a special cause: “The drummer for one of our bands was recently attacked in a parking lot after already being down from a skateboarding accident. The resulting injuries left him in the ICU for almost a week.”

“The attacker kicked him in the head several times,” continues Townsend of Slay the Dawn drummer Josh Bridges. “The total damages were a broken jaw, a fractured skull, and the loss of hearing in his left ear due to several broken bones and damaged cartilage.”

Times like this demand community, and as the local metal scene continues moving toward a new Renaissance, the Texas Metal Collective might be just the ticket.

“We started it about a year and a half ago,” writes Townsend, “essentially trying to make the Austin metal scene a group of friends fighting together, for each other, rather than against each other.”

Tonight and tomorrow, the Dirty Dog demonstrates togetherness with the following line-up for “Cactus Fest – A Benefit for Josh Bridges of Slay the Dawn”:

Friday:

Vile Aura
Southern Front
Beyond Gods and Empires
Texas Hate Machine
Prey for Sleep

Saturday:

Blood For Master
Lug
Headcrusher
Perish The Land
Brink of Disaster

This article appears in December 16 • 2011.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.