Audio and video: Harvey Milk plays tonight at Le Poisson Rouge with Coalesce and The Atlas Moth

Harvey Milk.

By John Ruscher

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Tonight the Blackened Music Series presents a night of thundering, ear-piercing tunes at Le Poisson Rouge. Georgia's Harvey Milk headlines, and Kansas' Coalesce and Illinois' The Atlas Moth open.

Harvey Milk, named after San Francisco's first openly gay city supervisor, formed in 1992, split in 1998 and reformed in 2006. They've released six LPs and, on occasion, mixed things up by playing all Hank Williams songs and the entirety of R.E.M.'s Reckoning during live shows. More often, though, they offer up their own brand of heavy chugging riffage, drawing together bombastic bolts of metal, subtle experimental textures and superb songwriting. Their latest releases are the excellent Life...The Best Game In Town and a self-titled reissue of their extremely hard-to-find 1994 album recorded with acclaimed producer and Shellac/Volcano Suns bassist Bob Weston. The band next release, A Small Turn of Human Kindness, which will be out on Hydra Head Records on May 18.

Coalesce followed a path not that different from Harvey Milk's, forming in 1994, disbanding in 1999, and started playing again in 2005. The band released their fourth studio album and first since reuniting, Ox, this past summer.

Listen to Harvey Milk's "Death Goes to the Winner," from Life...The Best Game In Town, below, and check out a Breakfast At Sulimays review of the song after the break.

Harvey Milk - "Death Goes to the Winner"

Harvey Milk on "Breakfast At Sulimays":