10 Best Concerts of the Week: KISS, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Genesis Owusu and More

It’s the last gasp of the spooky season here in North Texas. Pretty soon all the ghosts and jack-o-lanterns will be replaced by elves and reindeer, and purple and orange lights will give way to green and red ones. Thankfully, North Texas is bringing some serious talent to town for the final nights of fright, and it all starts of with some stoner metal from hell with High on Fire in Deep Ellum. Friday night is all about face paint and fright as KISS comes to town one last time, and Amyl and The Sniffers throws down in Deep Ellum. Saturday comes with ghost stories from The Mountain Goats and buried emotions from Beach Fossils. On Sunday, A Giant Dog threatens the city with its Bite, and Monday night Lauryn Hill and The Fugees come back from the dead. On Halloween, Tech N9ne brings the horrorcore with the Hollywood Undead, and on Wednesday, Genesis Owusu emerges as the ghost of music’s future. If all of this is too terrifying for you, Chris Stapleton’s All-American Road Show will also be in town to bring some comfort in the night.

High on Fire
8 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 26, The Factory in Deep Ellum, 2713 Canton St. $45 at axs.com

Oakland stoner metal band High on Fire came into existence around the same time guitarist Matt Pike was wrapping up work on the magnum opus of his other band, Sleep’s, Dopesmoker. While Sleep turned doom and drone metal into a masterpiece on that album, High on Fire gave Pike a place to speed things up a bit with a bit of thrash metal influence. Twenty years after its formation, High on Fire took home a Grammy Award in 2019 for Best Metal Performance with its eighth album’s title track, “Electric Messiah,” beating out Between the Buried and Me, Deafheaven, Trivium and Underoath. The band has yet to release any new music since 2019, but it released a remastered version of its debut album, The Art of Self-Defense, in August. The album had been missing from streaming services for some time, but it is back now in all of its glory. Arkansas doom metal band Pallbearer opens for High on Fire Thursday night in Deep Ellum.

Chris Stapleton’s All-American Road Show
7 p.m., Friday & Saturday, Oct. 27 & 28, Dos Equis Pavilion, 1818 First Ave. $100+ at livenation.com

Every year since 2017, Chris Stapleton has brought his All-American Road Show to North Texas. Past years have seen Stapleton in Arlington and Fort Worth, but this year he’s returning to Dos Equis Pavilion in Fair Park. In the past, Stapleton’s fellow travelers on the road show have included the likes of Marty Stuart, Willie Nelson, Jamey Johnson, Elle King and Morgan Wade, but this year he will be bringing along South Carolina singer-songwriter Nikki Lane and Dallas-raised country-soul artist Charley Crockett for two nights in Fair Park. Crockett recently released his Live from the Ryman album and Nikki Lane just put out the new single, “When the Morning Comes Around.” As for Stapleton, the country singer known for his whiskey-soaked voice has put out three singles this year from an upcoming album, Higher, due to be released on Nov. 10.

KISS
7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 27, Dickies Arena, 1911 Montgomery St., Fort Worth. $80+ at ticketmaster.com

Glam metal 1970s legend KISS kicked off its End of the Road World Tour all the way back in January 2019. That February, the band played its last show in Dallas. The tour then made two stops in Fort Worth as KISS made circles around the globe, extending the tour for a whopping 13 legs. KISS has been teasing its final farewell for over two decades now, but this time around really, actually, truly seems like the end of the tour and the end of a band that has influenced countless fans and inspired countless bands for over 50 years. The band will make one last stop in North Texas, again favoring Fort Worth over Dallas, before it wraps up this long tour at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 2. Though no support is listed, Canadian rock music duo Crown Lands has been opening up for the band on its North American dates this year.

Amyl and The Sniffers
8 p.m., Friday, Oct. 27, The Factory in Deep Ellum, 2713 Canton St. $30+ at asx.com

Australian punk rock band Amyl and The Sniffers first came together in 2016 when housemates Amy Taylor, Bryce Wilson, Declan Martens and Gus Romer wrote and recorded the band’s first EP over the course of 12 hours. It wasn’t great, but it was enough to get the band gigs in pubs where the band’s live show earned them a reputation across the world’s smallest continent. The band’s energy hearkens back to punk rock’s glory days when bands like The Stooges, Germs and Minor Threat were led by singers interested in turning the chaos on stage into a movement beyond the venue walls. That true punk ethos caught the attention of acts like Green Day and The Smashing Pumpkins who took the band on the road as an opening act to bolster their own street cred. Amyl and The Sniffers is now on a headlining tour of its own in more intimate settings and is about to show Deep Ellum what Australian pub-goers have known for years. Austin all-girl punk band Die Spitz opens.

The Mountain Goats
6:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 28, Longhorn Ballroom, 216 Corinth St. $36+ at prekindle.com

Lo-fi indie pioneers The Mountain Goats return to North Texas this weekend in support of the band’s latest release, Jenny from Thebes, which will be released the day before the show. The album is said to be a follow-up to the band’s 2002 release, All Hail West Texas. That album, which features local favorites “Blues in Dallas” and “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton,” also introduced fans to a character named Jenny, who has come up in other Mountain Goats releases. The new album will dive deep into the character of Jenny in a rock opera dealing with the place of an individual living in a hostile West Texas town. The new album will continue in the same musical vein as The Mountain Goat’s last release, Bleed Out, which saw the band eschewing its lo-fi folk past in favor of alternative rock. Singer-songwriter Anna Tivel opens the show.

Beach Fossils
7 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 28, House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St. $30+ at livenation.com

The last time Beach Fossils were in town it was, surprisingly, to open up for Post Malone on both nights of his summer tour stop in Dallas. It wasn’t the oddest choice for an opening act, seeing as how Posty is known for his emotional take on pop and hip-hop, and Beach Fossils has created a kind of surf rock that places all the focus on the heart. This gives its music a dreaminess that exists outside of dream pop or indie-rock. Beach Fossils are now on the road for The Bunny Tour with Virginia Beach rock band Turnover and Austin surf rock band Being Dead. Beach Fossils released a new album, Bunny, in the summer, which adds a bit of existential angst to Beach Fossils’ emotional exploration. The band is as chilled-out as it has always been, but this time around, it feels more like a state to which the mind retreats rather than a steady state of mind.

A Giant Dog
7 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 29, Three Links, 2704 Elm St. $20 at seetickets.us

Austin art-punk band A Giant Dog give 100% of their beings with every single performance. Singer Sabrina Ellis owns the stage in whatever scant cladding she chooses to don as brother Andrew Cashen rips through the ether with a wailing guitar. In August, the band released its long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s Toy. In 2019, the band released an incredible full-album cover of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible done in the frenetic style of A Giant Dog. The new album, Bite, is a concept album that takes place in the technocracy of Avalonia in which digital selves have more prominence than actual people. A Giant Dog’s solution? Rocking defiance and assertiveness against all odds. It’s a spirit that the band embodies on stage and one that is sure to leave you breathless by the end of the night. No opening act has yet been announced for the show, but Three Links is definitely the spot to see this band.

Ms. Lauryn Hill & The Fugees
7:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 30, Dickies Arena, 1911 Montgomery St., Fort Worth. $79.50+ at ticketmaster.com

It was 25 years ago – Aug. 25, 1998, to be exact – that Lauryn Hill released what has been her only official, full-length release, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Hill had spent the early part of her career trying to break into the music and film industries, and had more success in film at the outset, landing a supporting role in the 1993 release Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. It was thanks in part to her film success that Hill became a part of the progressive hip-hop trio The Fugees, with Pras Michel and Wyclef Jean. The group became an international phenomenon in 1996 when their cover of “Killing Me Softly” became an inescapable summer track. After releasing and touring her debut solo album, Hill has led a largely reclusive life, recording only a few non-album singles and contributing her voice as a featured artist. There’s no telling why Hill has now decided to reunite with The Fugees, but this retrospective is sure to be unforgettable.

Tech N9ne
7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 31, The Factory in Deep Ellum, 2713 Canton St. $39+ at axs.com

If you’re looking for a good concert for Halloween night, look no further than horrorcore rapper Tech N9ne’s co-headling show with Hollywood Undead. Tech N9ne began his rap career in 1991 with rap groups Black Mafia, 57th Street Road Dog Villains and The Regime before founding his Strange Musicghani record label and launching a solo career in 1999. Known for his Midwestern, chopper style of fast-paced rhyming, Tech N9ne has been a legend of underground rap for over two decades. Though the artist hasn’t gotten the mainstream recognition he deserves, Tech N9ne has been shown much respect from across the hip-hop and metal communities, collaborating on songs with artists as diverse as Three 6 Mafia, Eminem, Boyz II Men and Corey Taylor of Slipknot. Tech N9ne and Hollywood Undead will perform after an opening set from Strange Music recording artist King Iso.

Genesis Owusu
8 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 1, The Studio at The Factory, 2727 Canton St. $22.50 at axs.com

One of the most creative and innovative artists to emerge on the national music scene this past year is Ghanaian-Australian and genre-defying singer Genesis Owusu. Mixing elements of post-punk, hip-hop and R&B, Owusu broke into the mainstream in 2022 with his single “Get Inspired,” released almost exactly one year ago. Owusu’s first album, Smiling with No Teeth, had already made him an artist to watch in the rest of the English-speaking world, but American audiences are finally catching on to his original blend of music. Owusu released his sophomore album, Struggler, in August and was both cheered and derided by critics who either loved or hated the artist’s sonic experimentations. No opening act has been announced for Owusu’s show in Deep Ellum.