This Little Underground

A recent Juggernaut (July 31, Backbooth) – the solid new weekly night of heavy metal and cheap booze – featured Orlando's Power Dump, probably the second most scatological band name in the metro behind the supremely direct Fecal Ass. Their thrashy, hardcore breed of metal is fairly typical but competent and forceful. Particularly exceptional, however, were the hide-tanning vocals.

Since the metal train was still rolling through downtown the next night, I popped into the latest edition of the roving series Florida Metal Showcase (Aug. 1, the Social). From what I could discern, Orlando's Entity is from an entirely different side of the young metal scene with quite another approach to things. But ethos aside, their music was all buckshot – blasting but completely without focus. The approach is to pour all their various impulses into a single blender. Unfortunately, the mix has lots of ideas and fancy gear but really no cohesive concept. Besides a hybrid sound that's essentially a more extreme Linkin Park, growling vocals butt up against melodic rock crooning, and indulgently copious double-kick drumming is emblematic less of a band than a group of young dudes working out individual stuff and trying to pass it off as one sound. But in a few more years, these cats will all be in totally different bands. That is, if they know what's good for 'em.

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