Metal Up Your Ass - August, 2008

What's that? Those big outdoor summer festival line-ups just aren't quite extreme enough for your battle-hardened lobes? True, a weekend with Shed Seven and Scouting For Girls isn't quite the kind of riff massacre MUYA had in mind this month, but if you take a look beneath the remains, as it were, you'll find a few shows to keep you in tinnitus.

Embarking on a UK-wide tour together, Edinburgh post-metal boys Hitcher join mentalist Geordiechaps Lavotchkin and superb screamo act Crocus for the Dundee leg at Balcony Bar (1 Aug), going on to hit up Edinburgh's Hive (2 Aug) and Glasgow's O'Henry's (3 Aug).

West coast screamo stalwarts Mesa Verde head up the show at 13th Note Cafe in Glasgow (1 Aug). Support comes from Glasgow punkers Black Channels. Also expect searing hardcore punk rock from the USA as Career Suicide swing by Henry's in the capital (11 Aug). Support from cricket-themed Geoffrey Oi!cott and Intentions.

There's bound to be some shapes thrown in the name of big hitting French metalcore act The Bridal Procession at The Hive (16 Aug). Beefing up the bill, dubbed “Brits v Frenchies”, are Many Things Untold and the newly expanded line-up of Auld Reekie's Dead at the Scene.

Here's a tip: Former Icarus Line and Nine Inch Nails axeman Aaron North swings into the intimate environs of Dundee's Westport with Michael Shuman (QOTSA, Wires on Fire) and their new outfit Jubilee for what's sure to be an incendiary night of dirty riffage (24 Aug); support comes from local melodic rockers on the up Descartes. Jubilee go on to play a series of Scottish dates at Raigmore in Inverness on 25 Aug, The Tunnels, Aberdeen on 26 Aug and The Cathouse, Glasgow on 28 Aug. And here's a wee reminder that System of a Down lynchpin Serj Tankian will be making up for his postponed Glasgow date from earlier in the year and preaching his firebrand politics from an ABC-shaped pulpit at the top of next month (1 Sep).