Tonight’s Pick: Torche at the Black Cat

A foursome of metalheads based in the decidedly umlaut-resistant Miami, Fla., Torche coincidentally embraces its hometown’s reputation for bass with its earth-moving, woolly-mammoth stampede of a sound. But the band carved a name for itself in the stoner metal scene by providing more than just another fuzzed-out thunderclap. Torche’s foundation-shaking low-end vibrations are comprised of hook after catchy, soaring hook, which underpin melodic vocals that could just as easily assault the pop charts as throatily describe the elephantine shambling of primordial monstrosities. Comparing nicely with deliberately plodding, hash-worshipping mythmakers Sleep as with poppier acts like Queens of the Stone Age, Torche (whose latest album, In Return, was reviewed in City Paper last October) explores tunefulness on an antediluvian scale. The band takes all of the rock melodies you once forsook in favor of music with a more visceral vitality and reinvigorates them with the terrifying force of an extra-spatial behemoth. Torche performs with Boris and Clouds at 8 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $13. (202) 667-7960. —Michael A. Stern