Cephalic Carnage

Relapse Records labelmate The Dillinger Escape Plan gets all the attention (including the merit we give it below) for putting out mind-bendingly technical metal, but it's Denver's Cephalic Carnage that truly deserves the blue ribbon for bizarreness. CC performs a lobotomy upon each new listener it gains, wiping clean that person's conception of heavy music. The band's prior album, Lucid Interval, showed that it could morph one disparate genre into another with aplomb, having no trouble whatsoever blending a grindcore freak-out into a flamenco interlude.

Anomalies plays it a little more straight, or as straight as Cephalic Carnage can. "Piecemaker," for example, starts off with a stonerish intro that shifts up a few gears into highly moshable hardcore, while the tongue-in-cheek "Dying Will Be the Death of Me" attacks nü-metal from the inside out. There may not be as much excitement as on Lucid Interval, but it's still a premium batch of hydroponic death-grind, packed to the gills with stoner conspiracy theories, drumming more devastating than a laser-guided missile and wicked tempo shifts.

Doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10; call 314-781-4716 for more information.