Recap Rust Belt Sermon, Beatallica, and Seuss at High Noon Saloon

The High Noon Saloon boasted a lineup Sunday that may as well have been pulled from a flaming bowler hat by a talking poodle: The show went from dream-pop to Beatles-Metallica mashups to discordant indie rock. Despite this mismatch of styles, all three bands on the bill made the night worthwhile for a predictably small Sunday audience of around 20. The show opened up with the nocturnal pop of a fairly new Madison band, Seuss. Singer Beth Spransy actually opts to quote Dr. Seuss stories instead of writing her own lyrics, and surprisingly, it worked, in ethereal vocal lines that showered over the reverberated shimmer of guitarist Josh Makoutz. Meanwhile, Dan Spransy's hypnotic basslines locked into the controlled rhythms of drummer Ryan Baughn, and Spransy also provided droning textures with a vintage Roland synthesizer.

As Seuss finished up its set, the members of Milwaukee's Beatallica were erecting an industrial-sized fan, which, according to guitarist Grg Hammetson, helps them cool off in their 10-pound Sgt. Pepper-style jackets. Beatallica began its set of, yes, Beatles parodies in the thrash-metal style of Metallica with "Sgt. Hetfield’s Motorbreath Pub Band," which ran seamlessly into "Sandman," a brilliant mash-up of "Enter Sandman" and "Taxman" that rips on Don Dokken and replaces the line “pray the Lord my soul to take” with “pray for Cliff [Burton, the dead Metallica bassist] my soul to take.”

Throughout the set, vocalist-guitarist Jaymz Lennfield chopped away at his Gibson Explorer (James Hetfield's guitar of choice) and sported John Lennon's signature red sunglasses, using Hetfield's cheesy howl to sing lines about being breastfed by Madonna and drinking blood. Lead guitarist Hammetson tastelessly coated the band's reinvented Beatles numbers with whammy-bar dives and maniacal shredding. The thrashing rhythm section of bassist Kliff McBurtney and drummer Ringo Larz provided the set's backbone through set closer "Revol-Ooh-Tion," a bombastic diatribe on hair-metal. Decider had to wonder how a certain handful of audience members could play pool at the back of the room instead of checking out such a well-executed gimmick (not to mention the over-the-top guitar and bass solos laced throughout the set).

Finally, Madison's Rust Belt Sermon ended the night with an impressive blitzkrieg of political emo-punk. Bald-headed vocalist Shawn Bass hurled his voice into two microphones (one built from a telephone receiver) as he jangled out fractured guitar shrapnel, colliding well with the dissonant chords of RBS' other guitarist, Patrick Holten-Young. The band uncompromisingly slammed its politically charged tunes to an inattentive audience all the way through its last song "Olympus Mons." Like Seuss, Rust Belt Sermon didn’t exactly pair well with Beatallica (hell, who would?), but played a strong enough set to succeed on its own terms.