Crucial Concerts for the Coming Week

Exhorder Performs Slaughter in the Vatican

Come & Take It Live, Sunday 5

“To be 100 percent honest, without people connected to this album, there’s no need to tour in tribute to it.”

Obvious enough, this assessment from singer Kyle Thomas, Exhorder constant since 1985 alongside guitarist Vinnie LaBella, but what lends any thrash metal disc longevity? The New Orleans blasphemers’ full-length bow, 1990’s Slaughter in the Vatican, barks and bursts as rabid as the band’s West Coast peers/progenitors. Lined with punk and hardcore, its gnarly, rodeo-bull riffs ride the lightning, while Thomas exhorts homicide: “Desecration’s my greatest pleasure in life/ Your children will be my sacrifice.”

“We’re playing the album in its entirety, yes, but we’re throwing in extra songs to make it worth everyone’s while,” emails the frontman on Thanksgiving. “Also, as always, I talk a lot between songs, haha! Usually, I’m giving snippets of history fans might find intriguing. Otherwise, you may as well just stay home and listen to the albums.”

Twenty-seven years passed between sophomore LP The Law and righteous 2019 Exhorder comeback Mourn the Southern Skies, whose thicker, deeper girth sideswiped Come & Take It Live with Kataklysm that same year.

“A long pause in touring, including a full European headlining tour canceled, really tough,” admits Thomas. “The good news is we worked really hard on new material during the lull. I think we’re going to be okay.” – Raoul Hernandez

Lera Lynn, David Ramirez

The most extraordinary aspect of Lera Lynn’s fifth album emerges in its lush and expansive indie-tinted sound, surprising given that the Nashville-based songwriter produced and played every instrument on the recording herself. Aptly titled On My Own, it still anchors on Lynn’s intoxicatingly dark and sultry vocals, like Cat Power alternating between aching vulnerability and devastating defiance. Opener David Ramirez adds his own tumultuous emotional climate, stirring through 2020’s love and heartbreak cycle My Love Is a Hurricane and this year’s spiritually rent Backslider EP. – Doug Freeman

Sobbrs

Offering ideally teary-eyed context for a night of heart-on-the-sleeve diva-pop, Friday’s concert will be the Mexico-born, superstar-aspiring Sobbrs’ last hometown performance before he decamps for L.A. With a singing voice that suggests Brendon Urie attempting a seductive coo and a wardrobe exploding with rouge-infused color like a Pedro Almodóvar film come to life, Sobbrs puts himself forward with a bold style that reaches far past the understandably low-budget production on his albums. Catch him live before some Hollywood agent does and makes him a star. Flora & Fawna and Lainey Gonzales support. – Julian Towers

Black Fret Ball

After adapting to dips in membership throughout the pandemic, the Black Fret Ball returns with over $200,000 destined directly for local musicmakers’ pockets. The eighth annual edition presents a “real life mixtape” of performances from the prime 2021 class of artists: American Dreamer, BLK ODYSSY, Clarence James, Darkbird, Deezie Brown, Eimaral Sol, Guy Forsyth & Jeska Bailey, Harry Edohoukwa, Jake Lloyd, James Robinson, Jon Muq, Jonathan Terrell, Lisa Morales, Motenko, Nané, Pat Byrne, PR Newman, Primo the Alien, the Reverent Few, and Zach Person. Interested attendees may donate ($100) or become a member (starting at $750 per year) at blackfret.org. – Rachel Rascoe

Tom Waits Tribute

A fifth annual fêting of the mystic, poetic, musical mad scientist, scratchy-voiced storyteller, and barroom bard Tom Waits, typically pulling deep cuts from his 20-some-album discography. Among the locals paying tribute to the 71-year-old Californian, some appropriately tickle ivories: organizer Jessica Pyrdsa, aka Datura, and Choctaw Wildfire; some share his jazz instincts: Rent Party and Guy Forsyth; some embody his squirrelly musical essence: Craig Marshall and Willy McGee; and some possess his dramatic vocal grit: Bluesqueezebox and Black Eyed Vermillion. – Kevin Curtin

Vancerts Bike Night

Formed in the throes of the pandemic, Vancerts still thrives a year later because powering a DIY show out of an old Dodge B250 van is simply rad. Thursday’s throwdown at Stubb’s features a triumvirate of bands hearkening back to the days of toking out of acrylic bongs in the back of boogie vans with wizards painted on the side: the moonstruck, incense-wafting, 1970-style proto-metal of White Dog; the heavy garage of guitar & drums duo Black Syrup (Purple’s Taylor Busby and viral Foo Fighters stage-stormer Yayo Sanchez); and psych/doom/twang mind-expanders Crypt Trip. 7-10pm. – Kevin Curtin

This article appears in December 3 • 2021.