The Murder City Devils, Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco (March 24)

The first people I saw as I beelined it for the bar were Leslie Hardy, Murder City Devil's keyboardist, and Gabe, the band's infamous roadie, slinging back shots of tequila and sucking on the limes. Definitely a good sign of what was to come. It was only 10 p.m. on a Saturday night, which was too early for most of the lazy-ass punk kids with star tattoos on their necks and Buddy Holly glasses to flag down cabs to the sold-out show. Anyone careless enough to arrive late missed out on some brand spanking new San Francisco hard rock, though. This city can never have enough of that serve-it-up-on-a-meat-hook/punch-it-in-the-steely-gut rock 'n' roll. There are all too many of those cutie-sweetie-don't-touch-me-I'm-the-fragile-one-with-a-bowl-haircut types that make you wonder why they didn't turn all that damage in junior high into a hot rock of anger like the rest of us.

But that's their problem. I would rather spend my time basking in the hellfires of All About Evil. Evil's frontman, a Jesse Ventura lookalike brandishing a bass, threw out apologies like, "This is our first show. We'll get better"?but they cut the riffs with a razor so sharp you would swear they've been opening for Motörhead for months. It's a shame that Evil had to play in front of such a sparse, show-opener crowd, because this was the kind of rock that makes the mohawks shove the meatheads as they all chase their own tails. Their songs about bad reputations, bad moods and early warnings ("Don't Fuck with Me") lit the flames right through my center. The fact that there were people sitting down for this set is just more proof that it's going to take another big earthquake to rock this city back into its fucking head.

Between sets I jostled my way past packs of hungry girls circling the bands like wolves in vintage fur, to find At the Drive-In guitarist Omar Rodriguez kicking back by the stage. This wasn't the first time I've spotted the afroed emo-rocker at Bottom of the Hill. Every time I see him or ATDI frontman Cedric Bixler, I mull over the millions of ways I want to tell them why I love getting shattered by their songs. But in the end, there's nothing that Spin, Rolling Stone, the weeklies, MTV and Mike D. haven't already said, so really, what's the point?

Besides, if there's a new group to fawn over, it's Cursive?Omaha's answer to At the Drive-In. The chemically imbalanced band took the stage next and kept the audience on the teetering edge of their emo explosions, twisting feedback into melody into whispers into why is God punishing me what the fuck have I done to deserve this screams to crack the ice cubes in your drink. This is the sound passion makes at the moment when love and hate connect. I wasn't the only one in the crowd stirred by Cursive's kinetic energy: after the set, one pleading girlfriend pulled her smirking man by the sleeve, begging him, "Please don't start any fights tonight."

It was too late, though, because the fighting words had already crossed the stage by the time the Murder City Devils came on. The post-midnight show was the band's second performance of the day, a situation that left the members piss-drunk and proud of it. "The problem with playing two shows in one day," slurred guitarist Nate Manny, "is by the second show you've been drinking too much." "We tried to hold back, but we're drunk," blurted unapologetic frontman Spencer Moody, before the band launched into "Rum to Whiskey."

Although the between-song banter was prime 2-a.m.-at-the-bar slosh-talk, the Devils' set was anything but sloppy. Bassist Derek Fudesco and guitarist Dann Gallucci played their instruments like they were trying to rip these appendages from the sockets. Moody jumped around the stage, sticking his mic in his mouth at times, not because he was trying to "imitate Lux Interior," he assured us, but because "I can't remember the words to all the songs." The band played a tight set of dark punk ballads?both old material and new stuff that they're currently recording?as Hardy smoked a cigarette and kicked in the band's signature haunting keyboard melodies. When the set was over, it was over. No encore, they were done. As the Queens of the Stone Age's "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" took the stereo to signal the time for the tattooed vampires to go home, Hardy turned to the audience and offered this final explanation for the evening: "We ate too much meatloaf."