The Show(case) Must Go On!

Hope that means there's more myth and less reality. -- Roberts

CEPHALIC CARNAGE
NOMINATED IN HARD ROCK
6 P.M., SERENGETI
En route to a headlining slot at a festival in eastern Germany, the members of Cephalic Carnage made a little stopover in Amsterdam, land of the almighty hash bar. It allowed the self-proclaimed arbiters of "Rocky Mountain hydro-grind" a chance to test their THC tolerance before embarking on a full-fledged European tour later this year.

"Amsterdam was like a practice for what's ahead," says guitarist Zac. "We've got four shows coming up in Holland in October. Leonard [aka Lenzig, vocalist] and Steve [guitarist], they can take more than anyone else. The rest of us will be on the floor, and they're always coming up winners."

While some bandmates may excel in the pot-smoking arena, all four members of Cephalic Carnage have been coming up winners in recent years. A brutal blending of ass-breaking hardcore, metal math death jazz has earned the Denver-based quartet -- rounded out by drummer John -- a contract with Relapse Records, a festering following across the United States and abroad, and a confidence behind the wheel: In the past three years, the band has logged nearly 200,000 miles on the road, playing everything from South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, to the New England Metal and Hardcore Fest. The group recently got off a headlining stint with the Contamination Tour, a nationwide multi-bill caravan that showcases Relapse artists.

Having first come together in Colorado in 1992, Cephalic Carnage is currently touring behind its latest full-length release, Lucid Interval; since its release in August 2002, the album has sold more than the band's two previous efforts, 1998's Conforming to Abnormality and 1999's Exploiting Dysfunction, combined. Zac credits the increased numbers to the band's non-stop gigging.

"We absolutely love it, and we get to play all these killer shows," he says. "That's the only way that we're ever going to sell records, unless we want to be stuck in this sub-cult subculture. But it does mean that we spend a lot of time away from home. That's the life that we chose. Let the tears fall where they may." -- Bond

CREIGHTON HOLLY TRIO
NOMINATED IN BLUES
Creighton Holly Trio did not respond to our requests for biographical materials.

THE CZARS
NOMINATED IN ROCK
7:30 P.M., ACOMA CENTER
Ask Czars bassist Chris Pearson what the controlling creative idea behind his band is, and you'll get dead silence as a reply. "Um. Uh. I think I'll have to pass on that one," he says. "No matter how I answer it, it'll make someone else in the band mad."

The Czars make tension sound ethereal, chemistry feel tender. Since 1994, the band -- Pearson, Roger Green, John Grant, Jeff Linsenmaier, Elin Palmer and Andy Monley -- has woven a ragged clutch of threads into an elegant sonic fabric. The members cite as personal influences everyone from Hall and Oates to John Zorn, Alice Coltrane to Ladytron. "If you asked each of us to pick a bunch of albums to take on the road, all six of us would show up with completely different albums," says Pearson.

Despite the players' eclectic backgrounds, the music of the Czars is unified and focused -- focused, that is, like a bleary eye through a lens of smoke and depression. On its four albums, including 2002's arresting The Ugly People vs. the Beautiful People, the group boils oceans of loss and regret into a vapor of swaying rhythms and billowing guitars -- not to mention the stratospheric sadness of Grant's vocals. The sound is as constricting and epic as that of Jeff Buckley or Low.

The Czars have garnered reams of critical applause over the years -- including a "Band of the Month" award in the prestigious British music journal Mojo -- and have toured America and Europe with the luminous likes of David Gray and the Flaming Lips. At work self-producing its fifth album, set for an early 2004 release, Pearson and his compatriots have weathered enough of the music industry's wrath and indifference to realize that the act of creation ultimately has to be its own reward.

"Being in this business is tough when you sell just enough albums to keep plugging along, but you don't make enough to be self-sufficient. We're stuck in that limbo between good and bad," he says with good-natured humility. "Maybe that's our creative aesthetic: We're mediocre enough to survive nine years together." One listen to the Czars and you'll realize just how humble he's being. ­ Heller