Far below the surface, in the murkiest recesses of the fifteen-year-old male subconscious, there is a slumbering wraith coiled like a black mamba, a kundalini-like force poised to issue a torrent of poorly used obscenities at the first motherfucker to trip its hair-trigger. It is a hate-filled ant lion in the rocky sand of the adolescent soul, an anticipator of transgressions waiting to go postal.
The dark forces of Superjoint Ritual seek not to exorcise this unsavory bogie. Rather, they invite it to mosh in the pale moonlight and thrust its stinky, priapic middle finger into the air with them as they tear into the cochlea with raging metal incantations that some madmen merely write about in their diaries.
If you get the sense that a super-group composed of members of Pantera, Corrosion of Conformity, Down and no less than Hank Williams III has any intention of pussyfooting lightly into town and playing nice, you shouldn't. Superjoint Ritual's metal is way mean, a festering boil of the nastiest, angriest, most satanic aspects of the style. The group's full-length debut , Use Once and Destroy, is like a bayou-roadhouse knife brawl that never ends, and tonight they bring its blistering eviscerations to Pop's (1403 Mississippi Avenue in Sauget, 618-274-6720). Tickets are $15, and the show starts at 8 p.m. -- John Goddard
Celebrate Cinema's Stout Sage
A. Hitchcock and J. Stewart's high anxiety
FRI 7/25
Sir Alfred Hitchcock's films are like punctuation on the Film Classics 101 syllabus -- indelible masterpieces in which the art of entertainment meets the perfect execution of technique. They are so perfectly timed, so exquisitely sequenced, that the director (as the story goes) would fall asleep while filming, knowing that his precise instruction and extensive planning -- that is, his talent -- would ensure success. That he knew how good he was led to egocentrism and what was reportedly an almost totalitarian rule on set. But the films he created captured a style of slow-burn suspense that hasn't been duplicated since. Forest Park's St. Louis Art Museum is screening one Hitchcock film every Friday night at 7 p.m. through August 15 ($5, 314-721-0072). This week's film is Vertigo. -- Mark Dischinger
Go Fluff Pufnstuf
Digging the Kroffts at Frederick's
MON 7/28
On Monday nights you can drink at the funky Frederick's Music Lounge while you watch a movie, and tonight's entertainment is best viewed through the rose-colored beer goggles of nostalgia. The World of Sid & Marty Krofft means snippets of Saturday-morning TV shows from 25 years ago that seem to have been inspired by the hallucinogens of that gentler time; when we were kids, we had no idea. The Kroffts created H.R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Land of the Lost, The Bugaloos, Bigfoot & Wildboy, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl and a couple dozen other shows that embodied a freaky vibe that disappeared with your Shrinky Dinks and Spirograph. If you want more, seek out the hilarious episode of HBO's Mr. Show that features the "The Altered State of Druggachusetts," a parody of a Krofft special (7 p.m. and 10 p.m., free, 4454 Chippewa, 314-351-5711). -- Byron Kerman
Best of Bingo Bonanza
THUR 7/24
The NonProphet Theater Company's successful Militant Propaganda Bingo Machine sketch-comedy show presents a "Best Of" show at 9 p.m. at the Hi-Pointe (1001 McCausland, $4-$7, 314-752-1302, www.nonprophets.com). It seems the most popular sketches are the film parodies, so guests will see The Matrix mockery "If I Were the One," 8-Mile-meets-The-Lord-of-the-Rings-films parody "8 Miles to Mordor" (it's hilarious) and five-minute versions of various Star Wars films performed with action figures. You'll see the marvelous "Pacino's Deli" and "Monopoly with Walken," too. -- Byron Kerman
