Saturday's five-band metal blowout at Bogart's amounted to under an hour of worthwhile entertainment in the end of the night, preceded by over three hours of filler and intermissions.

        Hatebreed, the headliner, proved to be the only band that mattered on this particular bill, rounded out by Poison The Well, Throwdown, God Forbid and Sworn Enemy.

        The Connecticut five-piece blazed through a 50-minute set beginning with songs from a forthcoming album and concluding with older stuff run through at a furious pace. That new album, named Perseverance, comes out March 26, said singer Jamey Jasta.

        “There's a lot of people saying we've changed our sound,” Mr. Jasta told the crowd (which he tallied at “a thousand”). “We got where we are today with this sound. Why would we change it?”

        For those of us who haven't deemed the status of Hatebreed's sound a chief concern in our lives, the young singer seems to be taking a pre-emptive strike at any talk of “sellout,” that cursed word in the realm of hard-core metal.

        Mr. Jasta has nothing to worry about. Granted, such new songs as “Remain Nameless” feature more time shifts and detailed music than the earlier more punk-based, to-the-point thrash material. It's a slight change; Hatebreed is still operating in sub-MTV terrain. Don't look for this band to tour with Nickelback or some other dull “metal” video stars any time soon.

        In fact, Mr. Jasta spoke excitedly of an upcoming tour with speed-metal kingpins Slayer, as good a band to compare Hatebreed with as any.

        The other four bands on the bill each did a half-hour, playing variants of the metal-thrash-punk mixture but not with the polish, power and showmanship of the headliner.

        In fact, nobody in the crowd clapped at the end of the set for either Sworn Enemy or Throwdown, the first two bands.

        God Forbid earned some applause, if only for the fact that with their long hair the guys in the band looked more like Slayer than Sworn Enemy and Throwdown.

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