It was this New Jersey quintet’s high-volume, high-velocity brutality that initially clobbered me, but the real shock is how constantly their brand of metal shifts gears. It lurches, staggers, and sprints like a BattleBot gone haywire as the musicians barrel through changes in tempo, tonality, and density with startling precision. Guitarists Ben Weinman and Brian Benoit alternate between razor-edged riffing and arpeggios played so fast the notes merge into a waterfall of sound....

As someone who’d almost always rather do dishes than sit down and get my work done, I was tickled to find local fashion designer Shane Gabier in his insanely cute Ukrainian Village apartment Sunday night, frantically trying to finish his latest project. “I can’t believe I’m leaving in seven hours,” he said, cutting a long, thin strip from a piece of gray cotton jersey. It would become the collar for a cocktail waitress’s top, a sample of one of 13 uniforms Gabier has designed for the staff of QT, a minimalist Manhattan hotel from Andre Balazs, the hotelier behind LA’s Chateau Marmont and Standard and the Mercer in New York....

The creative writing faculty at SIU get less inspiration from John Cheever than from the fine spirits poured at the Cellar, a bar that doesn’t necessarily want you to find it. The number’s unlisted and the door’s not numbered; look for the dark, hard-to-read shingle hung in a corner of the parking lot along Illinois near Main, next door to Paul Hampton Photography, 101 W. Monroe. Even if nobody’s falling off his chair spouting poetry, the Cellar’s a cozy hole: they’ve got meat sandwiches for three or four bucks, all-around cheap drinks, and Elvira pinball....

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a popular item this election year: Strawdog Theatre Company performed the play in September and October, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater opens its version next month. Admirers of the extreme avant-garde, meanwhile, will want to take note of Giulio Cesare, a controversial, visually striking, often bizarre deconstructionist adaptation that Italy’s Societas Raffaelo Sanzio (named after the Renaissance master painter Raphael) brings to town this weekend as part of a monthlong residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art....

Hazel Dickens was still in her teens when her family moved from Mercer County, West Virginia, to Baltimore in 1954. In this unlikely locale, one of the most important singers in bluegrass and old-timey music began her career. Before long her voice, which tempers the high-lonesome cry of bluegrass singers with a soulful warmth lifted from classic honky-tonk, had gained her entree into the burgeoning folk revival movement. She sang and played bass with local groups for several years....

Yvonne Thomas: New York Paintings From the 1950s Paintings like Barnett Newman’s huge, deceptively simple 1968 Anna’s Light (now part of a retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, continuing through July 7) can feel preternaturally powerful, even overwhelming. Its field of red with vertical white zips on either side seems almost cosmic–an aspiration confirmed by many of Newman’s other titles and his essays. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

The monthlong Dance Chicago festival closes this weekend with two performances of the second “Jazz Rhythms” program as well as “Finale” on Sunday afternoon and evening and “Dance for Kids, Too!” on Saturday afternoon (see listings). It turns out that, for programming purposes, “jazz dance” is a broad rubric. One of the more promising selections combines ballet, jazz, and Spanish dance: the teenagers of JHD 1511, an offshoot of the Joel Hall Dancers, perform Nancy Teinowitz’s “Cha Cha Classique,” an excerpt from the company’s Nuts & Bolts–The Remix (see the Joel Hall Dancers listing for performances of the complete show)....

Dan Griffiths and Stephen Chipps–the creators of Lid Productions’ clown-theater show–are no longer performing in it, so two new ensemble members are now anchoring its blend of dark satire and silly scenes. Matt Massaro as bossy, greedy Krong and Adam Yencho as good-natured underdog Blorg are not yet entirely settled into their relationship–Krong and Blorg’s veering between camaraderie and conflict is still funny but should be funnier once the performers make the roles their own....

A common criticism of Jez Butterworth’s 1996 shout-’em-up, set in the hopped-up, mobbed-up London music scene of the late 50s, is that for all its post-Mamet, post-Tarantino aggression, its conflicts are stakeless, lacking any deep insight or universal resonance. For my money, however, the real problem with Mojo is that it’s a black, black comedy that’s rather short on laughs–which may be because it decides it’s a drama about halfway through....

Only suckers pay retail, or so the saying goes. Judging by the crowd at the Brown Elephant resale store on an August Saturday afternoon many Chicago shoppers are in the know. And it was coming in as fast as it was going out; in a one-hour period more than 20 bags and boxes were dropped off at the front counter. Employees and volunteers did their best to keep up with the rush, hurriedly twisting the dials on price guns as they prepped the castaways of American consumers for a second life in a new home....

When mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley, violist Claudia Lasareff-Mironoff, flutist Janice MacDonald, and harpist Alison Attar began playing together as Pinotage four years ago, they knew of no pieces for viola, flute, and harp that predated Debussy’s 1915 Sonata, and could think of few since. But this dearth of material didn’t deter them: they figured they’d make up for it by commissioning their own music or rearranging pieces they liked, since they knew each other’s tastes from local gigs they’d shared....

I gotta say I’m a bit disappointed in you. I’ve been reading your column for years, and you’ve answered the same question from gay men many times: “How can I hook up with my straight roommate?” Months ago I asked you a similar question–“How can I hook up with my gay best friend?”–and I got nothing. Nothing! I explained to you my situation–he’s cute, we flirt all the time, and he always says stuff like “We look like we’re going out!...

Since the late 90s Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco “Bass” Mann) has been channeling his James Brown obsession into meticulous re-creations of the Godfather’s hard-hitting funk. No matter which aggregation of his pals is playing them–from his old band the Soul Providers to the one-off Daktaris, who explored JB’s influence on Afrobeat–the shuffling, syncopated beats, deep-pocket bass lines, propulsive guitar scratching, tight brass charts, and organ swells are impressively assembled. Though the crew hasn’t broken the spell on Dap-Dippin’ With…Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, a roundup of hard-to-find seven-inches on Roth’s Daptone label, its pool of influences seems to have expanded slightly....

SHEILA JORDAN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » No instrument can match the malleability of the vox humana, and few human voices are as malleable as Sheila Jordan’s. She turns her notes over and around, discovering every microtonal facet, and licentiously redesigns a song’s melody to fit her peculiar style. On ballad solos, her quarter-tone warbles and trademark intervals–swooping up a fifth, stepping down a minor second–often give her music uncanny similarities to Native American chant....

This two-month showcase of Chicago sketch comedy features more than 30 local ensembles–some well established, some new to the scene–representing a remarkable range of styles and viewpoints, with two to four groups sharing the bill at each performance. Participating troupes include Stir-Friday Night!, Annoyance Productions, Weaselicious, Brick, ÁSalsation!, GayCo Productions, the WNEP Theater, and many others; the festival is presented by Posin’ at the Bar. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

“I’m sorry ’bout the Cubs, y’all,” says Peven Everett from behind his Roland keyboard. “But I don’t believe in curses.” He’s also released nearly all his work himself, on CD-R with minimal packaging, despite interest from labels on both sides of the Atlantic. He did emerge briefly from the deep underground last year with Studio Confessions, for which he and DJ Beni B cherry-picked the best songs from his other releases....

Street vendors outside Wrigley Field did a brisk business in “Cubs Suck” and “Sox Suck” T-shirts during last weekend’s interleague series between the two teams. It’s a pity they weren’t selling shirts that read “Cubs Suck” on the front and “Sox Suck” on the back: by the time the three-game set began, the high hopes of fans on both sides of town had been dashed by inconsistent play and unaddressed weaknesses....

The inventive Noble Fools make even the most inane audience suggestions into rich comic fodder in this “fully improvised crime-family drama.” When someone offered “flautist” as an occupation, that became the handle of a flamboyant new hit man. The suggestion of “church” had obvious possibilities, but the ensemble ingeniously pushed the idea further by having Tony’s son, A.J., turn choirboy so he could skim money from the devotional boxes. And when Tony’s daughter, Prairie, decided after a deliciously funny emotional outburst that she wanted someone bumped off for killing her cat, the Noble Fools made her reason for revenge work too....

Dear Reader: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I read the article while sitting in a parking lot after buying a (computer) antivirus package and PCI card, then drove south in a state of reminiscence toward Hyde Park along the jeweled coast of my adopted city. Having grown up in the shadow, as it were, of Verdi Square, and then made a similar migration from Manhattan’s frenetic hustle to Chicago’s relative big-city tranquility, I cannot help but think how we are all, in our fashion, a nation of refugees searching for an elusive sanctuary....

I’ve always heard that dentists have the highest suicide level of any of the medical professions, but I’ve never believed it. Is there any truth to it? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Dentists’ odds of suicide “are 6.64 times greater than the rest of the working age population,” writes researcher Steven Stack. “Dentists suffer from relatively low status within the medical profession and have strained relationships with their clients–few people enjoy going to the dentist....