If you're confused, Volume 11 Tavern is not anywhere near D.C.; it's a club in Raleigh, North Carolina, somewhat near where I spent my Thanksgiving weekend. I snuck out to catch Jucifer, a noise-rock/metal duo who play in front of a massive wall of amps and who will be destroying the Black Cat on January 2. Consider this your early preview of that show.

Jucifer's latest release, L'Autrichienne, is a concept album about the fall of Marie Antoinette, which is pretty nerdy, but live they dispense with all nuance and nerdiness in favor of obliterating any and all eardrums in the vicinity. They do the noise thing very well indeed; a couple attempts at grindcore are less convincing on the record, but live they come off a little better. The fact that Jucifer managed to get a crowd of less than 25 to start moshing at 1am on a Thanksgiving weekend is indicative of the firepower they pack.

There were a bunch of local-ish opening bands that also put on real good shows, and the whole thing was a dream to photograph, so here's a little photo dump—or you can check out the full set at Flickr.

Jucifer:

Black Skies (stoner metal from Chapel Hill, NC):

Transient (Raleigh, NC, more stoner metal type stuff):

Sloburn (Danville, VA "redneck metal"):