There's some stellar music on tap this week to look forward to no matter your flavor. The week kicks off with an absolute bang this afternoon at the Summit Music Hall with Cannibal Corpse, which headlines the Summer Slaughter tour with Between the Buried & Me, Job for a Cowboy, Exhumed, Goatwhore and others. And there's plenty more goodness in store, including Refused, which checks into the Ogden on Wednesday with the Bronx and more. Page down to see our picks for the five best concerts in Colorado this week.
05. CROSBY STILL & NASH @ RED ROCKS | TUES, 8/21 Seeing Crosby, Stills & Nash is a good way to knock a few legends off of your concert bucket list at once. The group, pared down on this tour to just David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash (Neil Young is now touring with Crazy Horse), churned out a string of influential cuts over the years, beginning with 1969's "Marrakesh Express." As this trio of baby-boomer strummers age and mellow with their audience, their songs sound more like sturdy lullabies than folk-rock landmarks. The harmonies are still here in spades, and you can hear where many of today's acts got their marching orders. CSN also finds time to spotlight its members' solo work just in case you were wishing and hoping to hear "Love the One You're With."
Visit our concert calendar for a complete listing this week's shows
04. GOTYE @ RED ROCKS | WEDS, 8/22 The most startling aspect of Gotye's sound is its sincerity. This is -- as others have noted both about him and to him -- very Phil Collins of him, quite broodingly Sting and earnestly Peter Gabriel. A fact that fewer tend to point out is that this isn't Gotye's first rodeo. Three full-length albums into a career that began in 2001, the 31-year-old Belgian singer won international success with last year's radio-saturating single "Somebody That I Used to Know," which means that most of his new fans have yet to be sold on either its new-album companions or its old-album predecessors. On 2011's Making Mirrors, Gotye has more to say and less to prove than he does on that isolated crooner: Artfully mining both his quirks and his influences, the album explores, experiments and dabbles, offering twelve tracks of nostalgic soul, smooth electronica and dimensions of rock, both eerie and acerbic.
Visit our concert calendar for a complete listing this week's shows
03. ICE CUBE @ COMFORT DENTAL AMPHITHEATRE | FRI, 8/24 With all of his extracurricular acting endeavors over the years, it's easy to forget that Ice Cube (due at the KS Classic with Snoop Dogg, E-40, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Kurupt) was a rapper first and foremost. But a single listen to his seminal work with N.W.A. or any of the classic albums that followed will remind you how dope the dude is and dispel any notion that he's anything but one of the tightest golden-era MCs who's still in the game. Admittedly, he sometimes comes off as corny and soft as some of the other MCs who have flourished as actors -- the Smiths, for example, Will and James Todd, his Tinseltown counterparts -- but, at the end of the day, Cube still manages to seem cool as Ice, at least to us. That could just be nostalgia talking, though.
Visit our concert calendar for a complete listing this week's shows
02. CANNIBAL CORPSE @ SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | MON, 8/20 Buffalo, New York-based death-metal legend Cannibal Corpse (headlining the Summer Slaughter tour with Between the Buried & Me, Job for a Cowboy, Exhumed, Goatwhore and more) has been going strong for more than two decades now, longer than many of its younger fans have been alive. That, however, is the beauty of this style of music -- and of Cannibal Corpse in particular. As long as there are fresh crops of youngsters hell-bent on exorcising their demons and pissing off their parents, this band will live forever. As might be expected from its name, the act has never shied away from exploring the grim, gory and gruesome in its lyrics, and it favors a sound that is intentionally ear-shatteringly loud and lightning-fast. With so many current and former Warped Tour types now trying to imitate extreme metal, it's refreshing to see legends of the genre carrying it out properly: no holds barred and ugly as ever.
Visit our concert calendar for a complete listing this week's shows
01. REFUSED @ OGDEN THEATRE | WEDS, 8/22 When it formed in Sweden in 1991, Refused sounded like any other hardcore band influenced by the late era of that music. But by the time of its second record, 1996's Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent, these guys made it clear to anyone paying attention that they were on to something a little different. Strains of jazz, punk and prog collided and fused into the caustic, bold statement of intent heard on the epochal 1998 album The Shape of Punk to Come. Invoking the spirit of Ornette Coleman's 1959 classic avant-garde jazz, Shape exploded the boundaries of an increasingly stagnant musical movement. If the band's recent Coachella performance is any indication, Refused still brings that transmogrification from frustration to inspiration to the stage.
Visit our concert calendar for a complete listing this week's shows
Follow @Westword_Music
