Portland’s Wizard Rifle makes weird and wonderful art-metal songs that would sit comfortably between Lightning Bolt and Melt-Banana on a mixtape. Despite being a damn good band name, it’s also an apt descriptor; Wizard Rifle specialize in doomy, trippy assault, like a psychedelics-fueled World of Warcraft battle happening in your ears.
It will be interesting to see how, live, a three-piece creates as many mind-bending textures as Wizard Rifle does while maintaining such an intensity. If new track “Crystal Witch,” a preview of upcoming LP Here in the Crystal Lights (Seventh Rule Recordings), tells us anything, with its fusing of the experimental impulses of Deerhoof with the aggression of Karp, it’s sure to be a wild show.
Friday.