Music fest hot and heavy

Now we know what a hash brown feels like.

Standing on the asphalt upon which the stage was erected was akin to sizzling on some giant griddle last Friday afternoon at the latest installment of the "Rock the Block" music fest downtown in the Fremont East arts district, across from the El Cortez.

The sun was ever more intense than the sounds pummeling the PA, most of which were of the deathcore variety, a subgenre that mixes the blunt force heaviness and guttural vocal barfs of death metal with the seismic breakdowns of hardcore.

This being a metal show, most of the young crowd, the majority of which were in their teens, came clad in black, amplifying the already suffocating heat.

The result was a daylong endurance test, with the air smelling of suntan lotion and armpits.

This go-round, the "Rock the Block" lineup featured the "Thrash and Burn" tour, comprised mostly of rising faces in the extreme metal underground.

Maybe the best act of the day, the head-spinning Periphery, featured a trio of six-stringers in progressive fashion, with lots of finger tapping and choppy rhythms.

The band included one of the finest bass players of the bill, Tom Murphy, who was prone to long, athletic runs up and down the fretboard, and the show's most dynamic frontman, Spencer Sotelo, who paired a Mike Patton-style vocal range with the requisite raw-lunged barks.

And so the day went, with straight up death metal bruisers Through the Eyes of the Dead swapping sweat with the snarling thrash of veteran femme fatales Kittie and the more complex charge of bands such as Born of Osiris, who blended elaborate synth work in with their bulldozer riffs.

One of the most refreshing developments on display at "Rock the Block" was the heightened presence of females at a show like this, as the ladies were once as scarce at metal gigs as subtlety.

But not on this day, as the makeup of the crowd was much more balanced, though, for some hard-to-grasp reason, many of the girls came clad in the misogynist T-shirts of headliner Asking Alexandria, a rote British metalcore group fond of emblazoning their merchandise with anti-female derogatives.

"Are you offended?" the back of one of the band's shirts read. Nope. Just bored.

And that wasn't the only paradox of the day. Midway through the show, a skirmish broke out during the set of pacifist Christian metallers Impending Doom.

"You guys are totally missing the point of what we're all about," singer Brook Reeves sighed as he took in the melee.

But hey, on a day when everything was overheated, why should the tempers have been any exception?

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.