Happy Kids Puppets

Delightfully hardcore, with triangles and facepaint.

Bovine Einstein

The smartest cow in the herd is still just a cow.

No Talent Required

Punk

Opisthotones

Originally, I wanted to spell this with a schwa, but I am too lazy to look up the code. Just imagine the e is upside down, OK?

MILFs on Ice

Sometimes your mom just has to get down and chill!

The Souls of Defeat

Too clever for their own good.

Twenty Past Tomorrow

Some kind of electronica-pop?

Their opener is a whiskeyed up garage band called Late: Thirty.

Victory Pumpkin

Upbeat!

Common Trolls

Yeah, the Internet is full of them.

ElectroniK Meat Babies

Seamless melange of techno-grunge with a sexual edge. Volatile electronic beats, repetitive high-pitched lyrics, and revealing pleather jumpsuits form the backbone for non-stop retro fun.

Sparky's Lust Muffin

The plaintive wail of the long-haul trucker singing softly along with the radio as his big rig speeds out of control down a fog-covered mountain, this is the aesthetic of Sparky's Love Muffin. Folk blues with raunchy but good natured bite.

Impa'chillin

Just another chronic jam band playing interminable drum solos and long-winded guitar riffs with the occasional catchy lyric. Basic background noise when you're sober, increasingly cosmically amazing the more the listener alters his or her consciousness.

Malicious Poetry

One of those haunting punk acts whose angry, percussive rage punctures your senses, leaving behind the empty holes of ghostly recognition that allow their subtle lyrics to blow through your spirit as if it were a pan pipe.

Disappointsville

Sarcastic songs, mostly about breaking up. The band's first effort, Welcome to Disappoinstsville, was a concept album that chronicled every aching step in the drummer's long, drawn-out break up with his high school girlfriend while the fourth album Population: Four Pissed-Off Guys covered more diverse territory, including separation, divorce, restricted visitation rights, and unemployment.

Tepid Chukky

What can you say about a band named after a bottle of hard cider that's been left open on the windowsill for two days? They're not as flat as their namesake, and less fattening. The cymbals hit you harder, though.

The Pejoratives

There are plenty of words one might use to describe The Pejoratives, and all of them are rude, inconsiderate, and politically incorrect. The sax player can make his instrument wail all seven of Carlin's words you can't say on TV, and the lead singer has Tourette's. This is a band favored by middle age men who haven't quite forgotten their punk roots even though they're married with children.

Amorous Moose

You may think they're kidding, but they play like they're serious. From the hit single "Baby, I Love Your Rack" off their breakthrough album, Lovesick, to the non-stop energy of the concept album, Migration, the members of Amorous Moose work hard to hold their own among more anthropocentric rock bands. Recently, they made headlines with three upbeat, intense cuts all hitting the top 40 charts at the same time: "Like Green Moss," "Natural Salt Lick," and "Runnin' through the Taiga."

Disrespectful Tweed

Quiet noise. A surprisingly enjoyable group out of Boston, Disrespectful Tweed unleashes the buttoned-down anger of the intellectual trapped in a material world. Popular among college music djs and underground club goers, the band makes a decent, but not ostentatious living playing rock and roll, punk, ska, and anything else that strikes their fancy. A band with integrity and a mission.

Third Place Victory

Celebrating the loser who exists in everyone's heart, Third Place Victory plays Green Day covers along with their own dreary brand of rock and roll, focused on ill-fated relationships, girl who don't look at you twice, and parents who insist that you need to move out now that you're in your 20s. Their record sales would probably be more impressive if their fan base wasn't so prone to suicide.

Spongelica

If you've ever spent a weekend binge drinking, woken up on a stranger's couch with a keg tap stuffed up your ass, and headed out to a bar for a little hair of the dog, you can identify with the 180-proof lyrics of Spongelica, the band that just rolled out of bed and hasn't had a moment to comb its hair or brush its teeth since 1997. Drawing on the old-school punk traditions of minimal musical talent suspended from a tenuous relationship to mind-altering substances, Spongelica appeals to the angry drunk in us all.