Lit Fix 8 @ Jewelbox Theater (at the Rendezvous)
Days between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day are traditionally fallow ground for readings, but for some reason this year’s literary events calendar is packed with good stuff all the way up to Christmas. This bonus season peaks with the December installment of the boozy local series Lit Fix, featuring a cast of lively readers including novelist Ryan Boudinot and poet Daemond Arrindell. The secret weapon on the bill is Sonora Jha, who blew me away a couple months back with a reading from her debut novel, Foreign, which stretches from Seattle to the farmlands of India. PAUL CONSTANT
Down, Orange Goblin, Bl'ast, and King Parrot @ Showbox at the Market
Simply put, Down are Southern metal royalty. With a lineup that consists of guys from Corrosion of Conformity, Eyehategod, and Crowbar, and also features the shaved-headed, pissed-off Cowboy from Hell himself, former Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo, it’s safe to say these guys know their way around a killer riff. Add them to a show featuring long-lasting London-based stoner-rock cult heroes Orange Goblin and the recently reformed ’80s throwback Santa Cruz hardcore punks of BL’AST, and you have a diverse showcase of heavy underground music that spans generations and musical tastes. KEVIN DIERS
As if having King Crimson play Seattle this fall weren’t enough, prog fanatics now have another treat: Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett performing songs from that English group’s most ambitious period—the six-album streak that ran from 1971’s Nursery Cryme to 1976’s Wind and Wuthering—as well as tracks from his solo LPs (let’s hope he focuses heavily on 1975’s classic Voyage of the Acolyte). Eddie Van Halen credits Hackett as the inspiration for his tapping technique, which was part of the arsenal of moves that helped the versatile axeman to imbue Genesis’s landmark ’70s LPs with a florid beauty and grandeur rarely matched in the genre. With such a bounty of complex and beautiful cuts at his disposal, Hackett should be able to keep prog heads entertained all night. DAVE SEGAL
Author & Punisher, The Crypts, and the Family Curse @ Highline
Like a combination of Godflesh and the Bug, Author & Punisher (San Diego’s Tristan Shone) makes an infernal din that rages against the feel-good ’tude of his sun-kissed home base. On 2013’s Women & Children, A&P grinds out glowering, chthonic electronic music with beats that thud like wrecking balls hitting buildings and vocals that sound like gargled lava. It’s the industrialization of doom, and it feels damned appropriate for a country dealing with rampant, unpunished police brutality and imminent ecological disaster. DAVE SEGAL
Cullom Gallery Pop-Up @ Via6 Towers
Two rotations (on the hour) of new works on paper by Robert Hardgrave, Juliet Shen, and Ellen Ziegler. There will also be hand-crafted cocktails and appetizers (no host) from TanakaSan, located just below this event, which takes place on the mezzanine level.
