Rock Picks: Exodus, Altamont, Art Ensemble of Chicago and more

Also playing Saturday:

Victor Dawahare

The Hangmen: Big city, bigger guitars

Jason Isbell declares, “We’re Number One!”

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More About

• David Cotner
• Elaine Brown
• Jason Isbell
• Chris Hakus
• Punk Rock

Jason Isbell declares, “We’re Number One!” (Click to enlarge)

Nicolas Maslowski.

Getting higher inna de yard: Earl “Chinna” Smith & Kiddus I (Click to enlarge)

Om: Rattling rib cages (Click to enlarge)

BEN KENNEY, DJ KILMORE at Avalon; TOWER OF POWER at the Canyon; COOL KIDS at the Echo; KOTTONMOUTH KINGS, SEN DOG, X CLAN at the Key Club; SOULIVE at the Knitting Factory; DAVE ALVIN, CHRIS GAFFNEY at McCabe's; LANGUIS at Pehrspace; OLIVER FUTURE, CASXIO at Spaceland; KINGSIZEMAYBE at Taix; L.A. GUNS, REVLON RED at the Whisky.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 20

Om at the EchoOnstage they're just two guys looping like automatons, but Om exist somewhere else. Had electricity existed in the ancient world, it's quite possible Salome would have danced the seven veils to something like Om's entrancingly spare drone poems. A strip of rumbling bass and chanting intonations from Al Cisneros snake through the hulking lock-rhythms of drummer Chris Hakus. Though Cisneros and Hakus got their start sluicing overtonal avalanches for San Jose's bong-sucking sludge-shamans Sleep, Om have evolved beyond post-metal's primordial tar pit. 2007's Pilgrimage, the band's third album, again contains a handful of compositions averaging hypnotic lengths, each of them variations of a few beats and notes bobbing like flotsam over an oceanic maelstrom. But this time, the group's torqued monoliths curve and fold with greater subtlety. Cisneros' fingers knead thick bass lines that knot around Hakus' drums as they thunder and drag. Cymbals don't crash; they toll like church bells. Cisneros chants in a Wailing Wall whisper or intones as if reciting from parchments. The music's minimalism contrasts with the spill of symbolist verse from Cisneros' half-parted lips. Not a guitar in earshot, just rattling rib cages. (Bernardo Rondeau)

Also playing Sunday:

JAIL WEDDINGS at the Echo, 10 p.m.; VERY BE CAREFUL at Safari Sam's; JEREMY ENIGK at the Troubadour.

MONDAY, JANUARY 21

Exodus at House of BluesIt's been six years since founding member and lead singer Paul Baloff died of a stroke, but pioneering thrash-metal merchants Exodus have for the past 25 years understood the essence of the game: Thrash never stops; it just keeps flailing away, always energetic and perpetually in motion. Tonight's live action — with newish vocalist Rob Dukes (where "vocalist" here means "ironically clean singing plus flange"), guitarists Gary Holt and Lee Altus (the latter hails from the surprisingly rather-good NWOBHM band Angel Witch), bassist Jack Gibson and drummer Tom Hunting — kicks off a six-week nationwide tour in support their new album, The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A, on Nuclear Blast. Dukes, after being fired by his old band, rode out from New York and spent 11,000 miles on an exodus of his own without a clue he would ever join Exodus — arriving at a fairy-tale ending that happens but once in a sainted lifetime. (David Cotner)

Also playing Monday:

RADAR BROS., HOLLOY, KARIN TATOYAN at the Echo; THE PARSON RED HEADS, THE SHAKY HANDS at Spaceland; THE MOVIES at the Viper Room.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22ABBY TRAVIS at the Hotel Café; RESTAURANT, THE BLOODY HOLLIES at Safari Sam's; MERLE JAGGER at Spaceland; POISON THE WELL, THE LOCUST at the Troubadour.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23

Kiddus I, Earl "Chinna" Smith at the EchoplexThat darned Dub Club just keeps bringing in astonishing live acts, and this bill ups their cannabis-fumed cultural ante even higher. With the presence of pioneering Jamaican ax-man Earl "Chinna" Smith, a.k.a. the High Priest of Reggae guitar (although Ernest Ranglin fans might argue about that), the potential for revelatory sonics goes far beyond recognizable boundaries. Smith's chugging, restrained and reliably mind-shattering fretwork has been featured on records with many of reggae's most significant stylists for decades — and he's also outlived such peerless collaborators as Prince Far I, Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, artistic titans with whom he both elevated and toughened up the music to a flabbergasting degree. He's paired with silky-toned vocalist Kiddus I, another veteran of the classic Scratch Perry/Jack Ruby JA studio era (and seen in the unforgettable smoke-out jam opening sequence of Rockers), for both an acoustic set and a dub-mad, full band session. It's sure to, as Far-I would say, leave you battered, flattered, shattered and scattered. (Jonny Whiteside)

Gallows at the TroubadourFurious five-piece Gallows, who appeared as if from nowhere at last year's South by Southwest, spew deliciously animal, authentic punk rock with intoxicating, gang-you-want-to-join gusto. Skipping a couple of punk's less-salubrious generations, they take starting points similar to its three-chord, cartoonish 1980s Brit bastardization and the mall-pop mutant that fizzed out of O.C.'s (double) garages a decade later — Black Flag's and Minor Threat's lean hardcore and the Sex Pistols' and the Clash's sneering discontent — yet avoid the dilution and uniformity that plagued the dark ages of the genre. Theirs is a truly 3D, visceral avalanche: solidly sincere and significant but twinkling with an almost At the Drive-In sense of sonic adventure. Front man Frank Carter comes on like a tattooed Thom Yorke after an electrifying Red Bull (and red hair) infusion, and, unlike his metalcore contemporaries, keeps his wits'-end, vein-straining London lilt (relatively) melodic and intelligible. Gallows' shows have left both band and fans bloodied — bring Band-Aids. (Paul Rogers)