In the summer of 1998, in the midst of the nü metal explosion, Orgy broke from the pack. Shirking the then-in-vogue look of oversized jeans, overlong shorts and overwide laces, the quartet of eyeliner-wearing dudes from L.A. took their musical and sartorial cues from the new wave and new romanticism movements of the ’80s.

It was a promising but ultimately futile movement. “People move on to other things,” says singer Jay Gordon, Orgy’s founder and last remaining original member. “You just have to roll with it.”

After a decade-long dry spell that ended with the 2013 single, “Grime Of The Century,” the band’s new EP, Talk Sick, sports a house-music pulse while retaining Orgy’s cyber-metal core.

“That’s what this band has been about from the beginning,” Gordon says. “It’s got its (electronic music) part and its heavy part.” But strip away the electro veneer and de-tuned guitars, and you’ve got sophisticated pop tunes. The hook-laden “Wide Awake And Dead” and “G Face”—a reference to the club and date-rape drug, GHB—captures the vacant mien of his fellow Angelenos. Gordon, a native San Franciscan and one-time San Jose resident who’s done his share of partying, says tox screens can miss GHB because it’s out of the system relatively fast. “It’s like the Snapchat of drugs. It scares me.”

Thanks to the double-platinum success of Orgy’s 1998 debut, Candyass—with its lead single, a cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday”—and exposure on Korn’s globe-trekking Family Values tour, Orgy’s hybrid sound looked ready to conquer.

But the group failed to embark on any significant touring behind their sophomore effort, 2000’s Vapor Transmission. That failure coincided with the advent of Napster and major consolidation within the music industry. The combination, says Gordon, dealt a lethal blow to his band. No longer with Warner Bros., four years passed before the independent release of Punk Statik Paranoia.

“I think it just came out a year and a half too late,” he says of the underrated release, which landed with a thud, despite being as hit-packed as Candyass or Vapor Transmission, if less polished. At the same time, guitarists Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck were increasingly distracted with side project Julien-K. Gordon, who owns the Orgy name, decided to soldier on.

Gordon is now planning his band’s triumphant return. It’s full circle for the guy who helmed Coal Chamber’s 1997 debut and remixed the Linkin Park single, “Points Of Authority.” An upcoming Orgy EP, slated for release in early 2016, will feature a bevy of producers, the same way many hip-hop and pop artists do today. “I didn’t plan it that way,” Gordon says. “I just get bored really quick.”

Orgy bring their pulsing, cyber-metal sound to RockBar Theater on Aug. 14. More info.

It’s 10am on a Saturday morning inside the recently opened RockBar Theater. While the mood is light, it’s clear that this crowd is not composed of morning people. As Barbara Wahli, better known as promoter and manager Barb Rocks, admits at the start of the meeting, she’s running on only five hours of sleep after a long night in San Francisco. However, she assures her attendees that the coffee is on its way. This is the second meeting for the brand-new San Jose chapter of Balanced Breakfast, a group that looks to connect and empower music industry professionals to create a more vibrant music scene.

Wahli, who’s been involved in promo and band management for eight years  co-hosts the meeting every Saturday with Robert Austin of Nemesis Media. The second meeting has attracted roughly 30 attendees—same as the first—and the room is full.

San Francisco blogger Stefan Aronsen and engineer Andy Freeman founded Balanced Breakfast with the aim of “boosting the Bay Area music industry … one breakfast at a time.” The concept has proven highly successful, with chapters sprouting in Oakland, Portland and Boston.

Roughly three years ago, she created a monthly music industry networking event with the Pounders, who she manages. After a successful first meeting, they folded after four months. More recently, she attended meetings for Make a Scene San Jose, a venture helmed by promoter Eric Fanali to activate the local all-ages scene. Those efforts stalled as well.

“It just didn’t really connect the right way with people,” Wahli says of both ventures. She was drawn to the the structure of Balanced Breakfast, which she feels is more organized than those previous endeavors.

The Balanced Breakfast crew in front of RockBar Theater.

Wahli is encouraged with the start thus far, adding that the feedback she’s received has been “overwhelmingly positive.” At this meeting, the group discussed topics for future meetings, which included social media, graphics and front-of-house sound.

Asked about her hopes for the group, Wahli mentions building a touring network with other Balanced Breakfast chapters. With added venue support locally, she believes these efforts can work to build a community spirit that will breed a better live music culture along the lines of a Seattle, Austin or Chicago.

“Why can’t it happen here?” she asks. “I think if we all work together to build that, in a few years it’ll happen. But it takes effort, so a group like this is a catalyst to make that happen.”

Balanced Breakfast is held every Saturday from 10am-noon at RockBar Theater.

What were you doing this weekend? Hopefully you weren’t at Chris Brown’s Capricorn Bash at The Fiesta Nightclub. Shots rang out inside the Southside dance hall early Sunday morning while the controversy-saddled R&B singer and rapper was performing his song “Loyal.” Five people were shot in the melee, but none were killed, according to news reports.

Brown was not injured in the shooting. However, his reaction to the gunfire was captured on the video-sharing app, Vine. Longer videos have been posted on various sites across the web the terror and mayhem that unfolded inside the club after the event.

Brown’s reaction:

A compilation of shots was posted on TMZ:

The event was originally scheduled to be held at the recently opened RockBar Theater, located at the former site of the Garden City Casino, but was moved at the last minute to The Fiesta Nightclub. It is unclear at this time exactly why the party was moved.

Murder mystery dinners are fun and all, but lets be real—aside from the candelabra used to bludgeon the poor victim to death, they just aren’t metal enough. That’s about to change this April, when Metallica guitarist and horror fanatic Kirk Von Hammett hosts his second annual Fear FestEvil in San Jose, which will feature a whodunnit dinner and party at the Winchester Mystery House and two days of punishing performances from the likes of Swedish face-melters Meshuggah and Oakland-based stoner metal trio High On Fire.

The VIP murder mystery dinner and tour of the Winchester mansion will be held on April 10. Hammett will join the guests, along with some “very special ‘horror royalty,'” according to the event’s website. The following two nights—April 11 and 12—Hammett will be showing off some of his horror film memorabilia at the RockBar Theater, where Meshuggah, High On Fire, Orchid, Blues Pills, Agnostic Front and Asada Messiah will perform.

“It has always been my intention that Fear FestEvil events carry both the weird and the loud,” Hammett says in a press release on the event. The first Fear FestEvil was held last year in San Francisco at the Regency Ballroom.

Check out the flyer below. Click here for more info.

Blue Oyster Cult—you know, of “more cowbell” fame—are coming to the Rockbar Theater in March of 2015.

Younger crowds will doubtlessly recognize the group thanks to the absurdist Saturday Night Live skit, featuring Will Ferrel as the overzealous percussionist Gene Frenkle and Christopher Walken as famed record producer “The Bruce Dickenson,” who personally cannot get enough of the Frenkle’s cowbell playing.

While the track’s persistent cowbell rhythm may have been the butt of the joke in the sketch, the song was a hit it peaked on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart at No. 12 and helped propel the group’s 1976 record,  Agents of Fortune, to gold and then platinum status.

The band had two other big hits, which still get plenty of radio play on classic rock stations to this day: “Godzilla” and “Burnin’ For You.”

The group has gone through various lineup changes over the years, but continues to tour and are scheduled to appear at Rockbar Theater on Friday, March 13. Click here for more info. Click below for more cowbell.

More Cowbell – Saturday Night Live from Dee Three on Vimeo.

Mark your calendars. December 11 is shaping up to be a nice day for a white wedding. Or for dancing with yourself… Or maybe you’re more into “Rebel Yell. Point is, whoever you are, you’ve likely caught yourself belting out one Billy Idol’s monster hits—in the shower, in the car, that one time you had one-too-many-shots of Jameson at karaoke night…

Christmas is coming early for local fans of the punk icon and music video pioneer, who is playing the newly opened Rockbar Theater in San Jose the second week of December. It’s going to be an intimate show at the 1,200-capacity venue.

Tickets go on sale Nov. 14. Click here for more info, and watch the groundbreaking, award-winning video for “Dancing With Myself” video below: