Aside from wanting to see what the fuss was about at Angels Rock Bar in Power Plant, I was stoked to check out some local rock bands that have been buzzing around town for a long time. If you haven't heard of at least one of these bands, you're living under a rock (or you haven't been reading Bob Suehs' blog): Truth Be Told, Skitzo Calypso, Beyond The Scar, Behold The Flood, Anamide, Burn The Fields, and Haddonfield. All the bands hail from Baltimore, and all the bands know how to rock.

Playing short twenty-minute sets last Tuesday at Angels made it hard to get more than a quick taste of what these bands had to offer, but let's break it down in short:

Truth Be Told: Hard rock with alternative roots, melodically creeping into your psyche. These guys just released an album, Artificial Hero. If the album keeps up the frenetic pace of their live set, it's worth the cost of admission.

Skitzo Calypso: Taking on new bass and guitar players late last year, it paid off on the second song of this brief set, which was absolutely riff-tastic. Vocalist Brad Cox even pulled out some Halford-esque NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal, for the uninitiated) high-register howls which was surprising in light of their back catalog. These guys are a work in progress, and much progress has been made on their latest, Between The Lines & Beyond The Static.

Beyond The Scar: Baltimore's version of Pantera, BTS were the first band of the night with a bona fide metal sound and lots and lots of overdrive. Kory G on vox looks viciously possessed behind the mic, and drummer Chris Pernia might be the fastest and most furious Angels Rock Bar has ever seen. Horns up for the finger-tapping solos towards the end of the set! Check out "Reap What You Sow".

Behold The Flood: Hardcore, post-hardcore and thrash elements combine to delivery the best breakdowns of the entire night, if not the entire month. Detecting a bit of a Hatebreed influence here, to be specific. Behold The Flood's set was a burner, with blasting vocals that shook the house and speeding guitars (did I hear some pinch harmonics?) that left me waiting for the album. These guys will be at Ram's Head Live on March 15, headlining a stage much more worthy of their sound than Angels' afterthought of a stomping grounds for bands.

Anamide: Taking this opportunity to play heavily from their latest, Lesson In Control, including the fist-pumper "Bow", the bleating vocals and chugging riffs draw heavily from '90s radio and are poised for a push into the mainstream. The samples should have been avoided in the live set on this night. When you have only twenty minutes to rock the house, skip the audio clips and break it down!

Burn The Fields: If you haven't seen the PRS guitar ads with Supernik yet, that's probably not that bad, you just don't play guitar. Melodic vocals that grow into vicious screams at a moment's notice and massive power chord riffs define the sound.

Haddonfield: Furious and melodic guitars and dangerous, breakneck vocal anarchy. Instruments flailing around like loose limbs. And then, it gets pretty. It's screamo, folks, and it's the best version of it in town. With a violently pounding skinsman and a charismatic frontman, Haddonfield take a name from a town in New Jersey, the state where their genre of music was defined with bands like Thursday. The most frenzied band of the night.

I regret not being able to go deeper in depth about the performances of this night, but lucky for you Comcast On Demand was on hand to record, and there should be a video in your cable box soon enough so you can see for yourself.

Tags: anamide, Battle of the Bands, Behold The Flood, Beyond The Scar, Haddonfield, Skitzo Calypso, Truth Be Told