For the Michigan punk band Chiodos, the touring schedule has been nonstop and intense. After New Jersey’s Bamboozle Festival, they immediately headed out with The Blackout Pact, shooting the video for their song “Baby, You Wouldn’t Last a Minute On the Creek” while the tour was in full swing. All this took a toll on lead singer Craig Owens, who fell ill back in mid-May, forcing the band to cancel ten tour dates, all told. Luckily for Buffalonians, Owens has made a full recovery and picked Buffalo as the stop to resume touring in support of their debut album All’s Well That Ends Well (Alter Ego). The album offers an exciting blend between two musical extremes, when harmonic vocals and hooks contrast with heavy metal chords and gut wrenching screams. Chiodos appears at the Town Ballroom tonight (Thursday, June 15th), along with metal meisters Haste The Day and The Showdown, punk rockers Flee the Seen and Buffalo’s own hardcore band It Dies Today.

Singer-songwriter Leah Randazzo has just released her debut album, entitled At the Root, and will mark the occasion with a performance in its honor at Nietszche’s on Friday (June 16). For the CD, Ms. Randazzo has composed sophisticated and soulful music that belies her young age, and she has stage presence to match, experience no doubt gained on last year’s tour of the Northeast which included an opening gig for Grammy-winning folk icon Judy Collins. Leah will play a "Happy Hour" set beginning at 5:30pm, followed by an evening of great local music —the kind that's often found at Nietszche’s —with the talents of Dave Rave, the Tom Stahl Band, and Tommy & the Two Tones starting at 9:30pm.

It’ll be like déjà vu all over again this Saturday (June 17) at Club Paradise, when the legendary San Francisco psychedelic blues band Big Brother & the Holding Company take the stage for a trip down memory lane. Of course, if you can remember the band from its early beginnings —in the Victorian mansion/boarding house at 1090 Page Street in the Haight-Ashbury circa 1966 —you probably weren’t really there, but Sam Andrew, Peter Albin and Dave Getz were, and they form the core of the band you’ll see Saturday. Missing from the lineup will be psychedelic guitar pioneer James Gurley, who is currently replaced by Dave Nieves. The role of Janis Joplin will be filled by Mary Bridget Davies, an Ohio based blues diva who has played “Pearl” in the musical Love, Janis. Tune in, turn on, and drop out for this show, if only to see if you can trust any band over 40.

After piquing interest from critics during last year's cross-country tour with Trail of Dead, The Octopus Project (composed of husband and wife Josh & Yvonne Lambert and Toto Miranda) seems teetered on the edge of indie-electro-rock success — and this hardworking band deserves the accolades. While they're mostly praised for the borderline-hysterical aspects of their live show (replete with perverse costumes, masks, and party favors), the release of the band's second album, One Hundred Ten Thousand Million (Peek-A-Boo Records) showcases the trio's musical skill in blending beat machines, keyboards, drum kits, and chaotic guitars to new heights (and lows), taking the soft and loud parts to further extremes without getting grating or too obnoxious. They'll be headlining Sunday night's (June 18) show at Soundlab, with Black Moth Super Rainbow (expect a full-length, split CD from Octopus and Black Moth to be released this summer), and Besnyo. Don't be put off by the lack of vocals —the Octopus Project makes electronic magic that would render any lyrics superflous.

If you know Jello Biafra as the former frontman for hardcore pioneers the Dead Kennedys and founder of the record label Alternative Tentacles, then you're familiar with his particular brand of angry-activist humor, evident by famous song titles like "Christmas in Cambodia," "California Uber Alles," and "Too Drunk to Fuck." Though 1979 was an especially big year for Biafra —he founded Dead Kennedys and Alternative Tentacles and also launched a somewhat tongue-in-cheek campaign for mayor of San Francisco —his sentiments may be best conveyed through his current passion, spoken-word performance, which is what he'll be delivering at Xtreme Wheels, 7pm on Tuesday (June 20). The current tour blasts corporate culture, the war, voter fraud, and plenty of other worthy targets. This perfomance will be recorded for his upcoming live album In the Grip of Official Treason, due out in the fall.

With the crowd-rousing, borderline-abusive vocals of the lead singer, Bonz, to the spine chilling guitar riffs of strummer Rich “the Duke” Ward, Stuck Mojo has been a leader of the underground metal movement going on ten years now. These hard-rocking, heavy-hitting veterans paved the way for the metal-rock-rap crossover that inspired bands such as Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. After touring relentlessly along with some of the other hardest working hard-core acts —Sevendust, Testament, Machine Head —Mojo took a break in 2000 to work on independent projects, not reuniting again until 2005. After that five-year hiatus, they're back on the road in time with the release of a new album, Southern Born Killers. The band appears in Buffalo at Club Diablo, with support from Infernal Machine and local heavy metal rockers Breakerbox on Wednesday (June 21), 7pm.