Summer Sanitarium Tour

Not that you should listen to me, but feel free to skip the opening set by Mudvayne. The pride of Peoria, Illinois, the band pretends to be aliens, which is always promising, but they don't bother to make anything new out of heavy metal's constituent parts; last year's The End of All Things to Come is perfunctory grindcore nonsense whose title is more depressing than foreboding. Sacramento's Deftones' new self-titled disc is depressing, too, but in a much more interesting way; it proves once again that no other major metal band has figured out how to soften the music's brute force without dulling it as well as these guys. Limp Bizkit should be worth seeing, considering the band's protracted guitar-player woes, the repeated pushing-back of forthcoming album Panty Sniffer's release date and the rendition of the Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" the band's been playing on the road; Fred Durst knows what it's like to be hated. If Linkin Park's recent Meteora hasn't captured the tortured sprit of a young nation in the same way that 2000's Hybrid Theory did, it still demonstrates the band's serious commitment to serious music; every generation deserves its own Bush. And headliners Metallica seem to be making something of a comeback with new album St. Anger, an unexpectedly raw slab of meat-market riffery and jackhammer drumming that's actually improved by James Hetfield's startlingly obvious post-rehab ruminations on drug and drink. He's turned the page; can you?