Melt-Banana, with Self Destruct Button and Dead by July
Grog Shop, 1765 Coventry Road,
Cleveland Heights
10 p.m. Wednesday, June 4, $10,
216-321-5588.
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Aside from screamo bottom-feeders the Used and the "secular P.O.D.," (hed)pe, X Festivities are heavy on white, schlumpy, bummer rockers cut from Scott Stapp's messianic Play-Doh mold. Each act has a cute baritone anthem that makes it, uh, "unique": Nü hedonists Smile Empty Soul "do it for the druuuuuuuhhhhgs"; tough guys Trapt warn, "Back off, I'll take you on!"; and Seether, South Africa's answer to Nickelback, flirts with optimism in "Fine Again" ("Everything's gonna be fine") before dropping the guillotine: "Too late, I'm in hell!" Cold and Staind are the conjoined twins of this circus of the macabre: impossibly gloomy, interchangeable ex-goths fronted by chromedomes. Yup. Ain't nobody getting laid tonight.
