Tonight's show at St. Stephen's Church is far from sweetness and light. Headlining the affair is Ilsa, a local metal-laced crust punk act (or, conversely, crust-punk infused metal band). The five-piece recently dropped a 12-inch EP on Contagion, a split with Finland doom-slayers Hooded Menace. Their lone song on the release is titled "Titan Arum," the name of a massive flower that emits a smell akin to a rotting animal. It's an apt choice for a band that delivers swaths of brutal, blood-curdling noise, and happens to be named after a '70s Nazi sexploitation film called Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.

A couple Providence acts hit the stage before Ilsa: The Body is an epic doom duo and Assembly of Light Choir is a loose ensemble of female vocalists with a headcount in the 20s (but only 14 singers have been on tap for their current trek). The Body got some assistance from the choir on its critically acclaimed 2010 album, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, and the two musical, um, bodies are in the middle of a joint tour that's often collaborative.

Also on the bill is an introspective post-rock band from North Carolina called Braveyoung. There's been a flood of post-rock bands on the scene lately, making it hard to distinguish one band's fragile riffs from the next. But perhaps the best introduction to Braveyoung's music is a New York Times video about a young couple dealing with the painful reality of living with an terminal illness, "Love Endures Even Cancer." Braveyoung's classically imbued music soundtracks the heartbreaking story with moving grace.

Ilsa, The Body, Assembly of Light Choir, and Braveyoung perform at 7 p.m. at St. Stephen's Church, 1525 Newton St. NW. $10. All ages.

That sliver of the population should be pleased to know that the first annual Thunder Festival, scheduled for May 28 at Bull Run Park, will go on as planned.

Thunder Festival appeals to a particularly macho strain of patriotism—one that likes its motorcycles huge and its pants leather. On its website, the event is described as "a SALUTE to every Patriot, Soldier and Red-Blooded American who calls these GREAT UNITED STATES their home!" Yet the fest is not an official part of Rolling Thunder, the POW-MIA demonstration that takes over downtown Washington every year on Memorial Day weekend. Organizer Art Sylmar, a 37-year-old resident of Gainesville, Va., is simply hoping that some of the guys in town for Sunday's Ride for Freedom will be willing to skip down to Fairfax on Saturday. "These guys have never been treated to a full-on concert," he says.

Technically, Rolling Thunder attendees will get a concert on Sunday—Nancy Sinatra is playing the official Rolling Thunder musical tribute at the Reflecting Pool—but that ain't exactly "full-on." Thunder Fest's gonna have a "Baddest Motorcycle" contest, a wing-eating competition sponsored by Hooters, a classic cars show, and two events involving little people: a concert by Ozzy Osbourne tribute act Little Ozzy and a WWF-style show by self-proclaimed midget wrestlers the Half-Pint Brawlers. Manliest of all, the headlining act is Jackyl—the Southern rock band infamous for its hit song "The Lumberjack," in which lead singer Jesse James Dupree plays a solo on a chainsaw. Eat sawdust, Zep Fest.

But while Thunder Festival appears to be pretty damn masculine on the surface, its roots are buried in an even more testosterone-rich subsoil. Sylmar, when he's not booking crotch rock bands from the '90s, runs Operation Octagon, one of the largest cage fighting groups in the region.

Operation Octagon promotes four mixed martial arts events per year, lately at the Dulles Sportsplex in Sterling, Va. (The next fight takes place July 30.) Attendance hovers around 3,000 for each event, and many of them sell out. "As far as MMA goes in this area," he says, "we're kind of the place to fight...we get [the fighters] before they're famous."  Former Ultimate Fighter finalist Kris McCray—a native of Woodbridge, Va.— used to fight for Operation Octagon.

Sylmar, a former linguist for the Air Force, hatched the idea for a veteran's event a couple years ago, and began writing checks for it six months later. He secured sponsorships from a few Octagon supporters, including Max Muscle Sports Nutrition and Freedom Bail Bonding. $5 from each Thunder Festival ticket will go toward the National League of POW-MIA Families, and an additional contribution will be set aside for Charter for Veterans, a non-profit that hosts charter boat rides for wounded veterans. (The charity is also sponsoring Thunder Festival's beer garden.) But Sylmar's day-long event may not have taken shape were it not for MMA. "It all started with a Facebook friend request," he says. Through Facebook, Sylmar learned that the Jackyl frontman was a cage fighting aficionado. After that, he says, "it was easy" to convince Dupree and his band to play the festival.

More than a decade after Sen. John McCain referred to MMA as "human cockfighting," the famously raw sport still remains fringey in the U.S.—and illegal in several states. But the promoter seems to understand that other people might not share his taste—or pride— in violent entertainment. Sylmar's sole Thunder Festival co-investor chooses to remain unnamed, he says. But not out of fear of being associated with cage fighting. He doesn't "want to be publicly associated with midget wrestling," says Sylmar. "Politics in D.C.—what are you gonna do?"

The newest band featured by Scion A/V? Local grindcore trio Magrudergrind. Perhaps Scion isn't exactly the kind of name a metal musician would like to be associated with, as the Austerity Program frontman Justin Foley made clear in an op-ed for MetalSucks recently. But, as a choice to kick off a series of metal releases, you can't go wrong with Magrudergrind.

The group's EP, Crusher (a tribute to Earache Records' 1989 Grindcrusher compilation), is now available, and you can stream all six songs for free right now. Expect lots of bone-shattering noise and, um, rapping.

Scion A/V Presents: Magrudergrind – Crusher by ScionAV

"Thanks again. We're gone."

Those are the last sounds that atmospheric metal band Isis left in their fans' ears as they exited the stage at the 9:30 Club last night. Having announced the end of the band in May, Isis are currently on a "farewell tour" with the Melvins, and while listening to Isis live is a lot like just listening to one of their records at insanely high volumes, that's not really a bad thing at all. It didn't hurt that they played a number of cuts off of Oceanic and Panopticon, widely considered their best efforts.

More photos after the jump.

The Melvins, though a bigger draw than Isis, actually insisted on opening for them after Isis' announcement that this would be their final tour:

Full gallery here.

Last weekend, literally thousands of metalheads from around the world descended on Baltimore for the annual Maryland Deathfest, which just seems to keep getting bigger each year. For the 2010 version, there were two outdoor stages in addition to the main inside stage. While I was only able to make Friday of this year's three-day festival, that meant that I had the privilege of seeing the newest incarnation of Gorguts, the legendary Canadian death metal group whose music makes a lot of modern technical metal look like child's play.

Many more photos from last Friday after the jump and at the full gallery.

Tombs (Brooklyn):

Jesus Crost (The Netherlands):

Malignancy (New York):

Birds of Prey (Richmond):

Nazxul (Australia):

Watain (Sweden):

Gorguts (Quebec):

Gride (Czech Republic):

Coffins (Japan):

D.R.I. (San Francisco):

Full gallery here.

Six months had passed since Jucifer's last performance in the D.C. area, so it was time for another: last night's show at the Black Cat was the duo's second in the states since it wrapped up a lengthy European tour (the first being a brief set last Saturday at Maryland Deathfest). Drummer Edgar Livengood was less than enthralled by his performance, which is perhaps why the band played only 25 minutes—a short set even by its standards—but to those of us in the audience they sounded as lively, powerful, and just plain loud as ever.

More photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

The Gloominous Doom opened with a hilarious set of thrash metal mixed with the occasional ska guitar part, which worked much better than one might expect:

Full gallery here.

Utah's Gaza inflicted some of the most bewilderingly complex and mind-numbingly heavy death metal imaginable on an unsuspecting Ottobar crowd last night, with a set that was fantastic and far too short. They were followed by Californians Cattle Decapitation, whose ultratechnical grindcore was, unfortunately, not served well by a muddy sound mix. More photos after the jump.

Gaza:

Cattle Decapitation:

*

*In preparation for the forthcoming Academy Awards, Total Film posts the top twenty best and worst Oscar speeches over the years. Among the best? Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's surprise win for Best Original Screenplay, Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein's win for Best Documentary Short Subject, and Kate Winslet's "daddy's girl" speech for Best Actress. The worst are made up of the more trite and overly dramatic speeches, including Marlon Brando's American Indian replacement, James Cameron's "I'm the king of the world" shout-out, and Halle Berry and Gwyneth Paltrow's weepy spiels.

*Charlie Sheen enters rehab for undisclosed "preventative measures" and announces he is officially taking a break from Two and a Half Men two months after he was accused of assaulting his wife. Whether he is in rehab for drugs, alcohol, domestic abuse, or letting his shitty CBS sitcom last seven seasons remains to be seen.

*Salman Rushdie announces plans to write a novel about his decade of hiding in England. Rushdie was forced into hiding after the Iranian government sent out an execution order for Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses.

*Role reversal time! Former professional wrestler Ric Flair's wife is arrested for domestic violence against the multiple-WWE world heavyweight champion.

*The New York Post reports that Johnny Depp is set to appear on Sunday's episode of 48 Hours Mystery on CBS in support of the West Memphis Three. Depp, along with fellow celebrity supporters like Winona Ryder and Eddie Vedder, think that the three men accused of killing three 8-year-olds in 1994 were unfairly accused and convicted simply because they liked metal music and authors like Stephen King.

*Bristol Palin announces she is going to play herself on an upcoming episode of ABC Family's teen pregnancy drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

*Tonight in City Lights: Washington Ballet's The Great Gatsby at the Kennedy Center.

Photo by Mikio Ariga, via MySpace.

Dutch band Epica brought its bombastic mix of symphonic, gothic, and death metal to (the newly renovated!) Jaxx on Tuesday night to a nearly sold-out house. More photos of Epica after the jump and at the full gallery. The full gallery also includes shots of the opening bands.

A quick portrait of Epica before its set, outside in the cold:

Full gallery here.

Swedish melodic death-metal stalwarts Arch Enemy kicked off its 2010 U.S. tour at Recher Theatre in Towson last night. While not quite in top form, frontwoman Angela Gossow and company put on a show that was more than intense enough for a Wednesday night out. More photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

Full gallery here.