3 Inches of Blood: Man, Myth, and Heavy Metal

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YOU KNOW YOU'VE GOT 'EM. Around the corner, down the stairs, in the dark. You flip on the Al Gore-approved fluorescent bulb that makes your basement look like a serial killer's lair. They scatter. But they'll be back — soon and in force. You, pal, have an orc problem.

Time to break out the 20-sided dice and crank up the axe-swinging escapist fury of 3 Inches of Blood.

GWAR will bring the glop to the 9:30 Club on Thursday, but don't be surprised if a lot of the headbangers aren't there for more jizness as usual.

"The vibe we have is almost pre-subgenre metal," said 3 Inches guitarist Shane Clark. The band proudly harks back to "traditional metal, new wave of British heavy metal," but on several counts it stands apart. For one thing, there's the vocal onslaught of Cam Pipes and Jamie Hooper.

"It's just that interesting dynamic of Cam doing the high falsetto-style stuff and then Jamie doing the very abrasive, black metal-style vocals," Clark said. "It's way more apparent on the new album. There's more separation between the two. They don't really sing anything at the same time."

If the blistering combination of shrunken-codpiece shriek and larynx-lacerating deathgargle doesn't scorch your eardrums, the band's pummeling virtuosity will. "Fire Up the Blades" is so precise and unrelenting you wonder if it's all a studio illusion. Can 3 Inches possibly be that tight live?

"Probably tighter," Clark replied. "What you hear on the album is what we sound like in the practice space, what we sound [like] onstage. At the end of the tour, we're tighter than that even."

» 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW; with GWAR and Mensrea, Thu., $20; 202-265-0930. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon
Photo courtesy Roadrunner Records