Hello, fellow Freeform Portland listeners! It is I, dj zen_hound, returning after a long hiatus with a fresh Portland show guide. I spent most of the winter hibernating. As one does. But there’s work to be done, so I roused myself some time after the spring equinox and starting researching the goings-on about town and re-investing myself in your personal life. Below you will find a list of shows occurring in Portland this week, from Sunday to Sunday. While this is in no way meant to be an exhaustive show calendar covering every single live event in the city (I tried doing that once, it was awful, never again), my hope is that it will at least give you a glimpse of the variety of flavors of Portland music available to you.
If you see a band or artist name appearing as a hyperlink, that link will take you to the artist’s Bandcamp page – give them a listen! If there is no link, all that means is I was unable to find that artist’s Bandcamp page (sometimes they just don’t have one! Weird). However, it might really still exist somewhere, or they have a Soundcloud, or they’re on Spotify or Apple Music or any of them.
If you see a venue name or address appearing as a link, that link will take you to an event page or events calendar where you can get more information, like show times, age restrictions, or requirements about proof of vaccination or negative COVID tests, or just how to buy tickets.
The line of text following the vendor information will be a short list of genre and subgenre descriptive terms for the artists, the majority of which are derived from the Bandcamp pages themselves. Obviously, categorization can be tricky, not everything is so cut and dry, and assigning genres and labels can at times be more prescriptive or even proscriptive than descriptive (not a topic I am willing or able to discuss in this little blog post), but I personally find stuff like that immensely helpful in determining if something might be “up my alley” and worth exploring, so I hope it is a little bit helpful to you as well. Largely, the terms used are the terms offered by the artists themselves, which I find useful far more often than not.
Without further ado, here it is.
Sunday 4/9
Mare, Dog Cult, Tim
The Fixin’ To (8218 N Lombard St)
stoner metal, stoner rock, heavy metal, hard rock, indie rock, horses
Coffin Rot, Maul, Gorgatron, Oxygen Destroyer
High Water Mark Lounge (6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd)
old school death metal, brutal death metal, grindcore, thrash metal
Edens Alley, The Jellybean Man and his Band of Geeks
Turn! Turn! Turn! (8 NE Killingsworth St)
experimental music, alternative, acoustic, indie, art pop, psychedelic
Monday 4/10
Annapura, Moxiebeat, Fatal State, Rainmaking
Black Water Bar (835 NE Broadway)
punk rock, hardcore punk, political punk, post-hardcore, screamo, post-hardcore
Screaming Females, Generación Suicida, Smirk
Dante’s (350 W Burnside St)
rock, punk rock, hardcore punk, raw punk, garage punk
Stainless, Nyx Division, DJ Just Dave
High Water Mark Lounge (6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd)
hard rock, heavy metal, post-punk, goth rock, deathrock
Feral Spells, Sove The Second, Boar Door
Turn! Turn! Turn! (8 NE Killingsworth St)
experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, folk pop, indie rock
Tuesday 4/11
Covenant, Puerta Negra, [STEREO] TYPICAL
The Coffin Club (421 SE Grand Ave)
drum & bass, electro, ambient electronic, trip hop, futurepop, electronic body music, synthpunk, industrial, darkwave, post-punk, minimal synth
Only Echoes, If This Be Doomsday, Alum Occulta, The Mighty Missoula
High Water Mark Lounge (6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd)
post-metal, instrumental metal, doom metal, heavy metal, post-hardcore, post-punk, atmospheric black metal, Cascadian black metal, instrumental post-rock, ambient rock
No Fun (1709 SE Hawthorne Blvd)
punk rock, alternative rock, post-hardcore, indie rock, garage rock, bedroom pop
Wednesday 4/12
Alberta Street Pub (1036 NE Alberta St)
progressive rock, progressive metal, folk rock, jazz fusion, neo-classical
Twans, Paper Gates, Brass Clouds
The Lollipop Shoppe (736 SE Grand Ave)
experimental jazz, ambient rock, artpop, ambient electronic, electronic dance music, deep trance
Debby Friday, Sweet Love Under Tyranny, Desire Beat
Mississippi Studios (3939 N Mississippi Ave)
experimental electronic, experimental hip hop, darkwave, coldwave, goth, industrial, electronic body music, synthpop, synthwave
Thursday 4/13
Houses of Heaven, for all the emptiness, Stariana
The Coffin Club (421 SE Grand Ave)
post-punk, industrial, krautrock, techno, darkwave, synthpop, electronic body music
Yuvees, The Wind-Ups, Black Shelton, Clam Bait
The Fixin’ To (8218 N Lombard St)
noise rock, post-punk, mutant disco, experimental punk, power pop, punk rock, hard rock, country rock, post-hardcore
Vertacyn Arc Materializer, it&I, Hovering Shrikes
High Water Mark Lounge (6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd)
art rock, experimental rock, psychedelic rock, noise rock, doom pop, cabaret, carnavelesque, indie rock, new wave, post-punk
Waffle Taco, Clodewerks, The Exosphere Project
No Fun (1709 SE Hawthorne Blvd)
experimental jazz, experimental electronic, space folk, psychedelic rock
Collate, Kilynn Lunsford, Mattress
Turn! Turn! Turn! (8 NE Killingsworth St)
no wave, post-punk, art punk, experimental pop, art pop, post-punk, electropop, dance music, industrial lounge music, synth soul
Friday 4/14
Warren Dunes, Wuhlux
alternative rock, alternative pop, indie pop, indie rock, beach music
Aurelio Voltaire, 2 Libras
The Coffin Club (421 SE Grand Ave)
goth rock, goth pop, folk rock, folk punk, cyperpunk, darkwave, synthpunk
Iron Sheep, Spectrum/Static, Outreach Around
Hawthorne Hideaway (2221 SE Hawthorne Blvd)
hard rock, punk rock, noise rock, garage rock, experimental rock, indie rock
Felsenmirror, Aerial Ruin, Floom
High Water Mark Lounge (6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd)
atmospheric black metal, doom metal, post-metal, acoustic metal, folk metal, experimental metal, flute doom
Hell Fire, R.I.P., Leathurbitch
The Six Below Midnight (3341 SE Belmont St)
heavy metal, speed metal, thrash metal, doom metal, proto-metal, hard rock, glam metal
Saturday 4/15
The Prids, Sun Atoms, Bridal Veil
Doug Fir Lounge (830 E Burnside St)
indie rock, shoegaze, post-punk, noise pop, krautrock, psychedelic rock, post modern pop, dreampop, alternative rock
High Water Mark Lounge (6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd)
desert rock, stoner rock, noise rock, post-punk, garage rock, math rock, heavy blues, psychedelic
Mini Blinds, The Wind-Ups, Hell Nancy
Zer0 Wave (720 N Killingsworth St)
dreampop, indie pop, psychedelic pop, power pop, punk rock, garage rock, country rock, brutal country, alternative country
Sunday 4/16
5¢ Freakshow, Evelyn’s Casket, Ghost Waves
The Coffin Club (421 SE Grand Ave)
punk rock, horror punk, rockabilly, psychobilly, pop punk
Box Elder, Coma Girl, Great Year
High Water Mark Lounge (6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd)
dreampop, indie pop, indie rock, pop punk
Undude, Vertacyn Arc Materializer, The Mercury Tree
Turn! Turn! Turn! (8 NE Killingsworth St)
indie rock, alternative rock, grunge, art rock, experimental rock, psychedelic rock, noise rock, math rock, progressive rock
That’ll do it!
If you feel there’s something I missed, some glaring omission, please let me know! In the comments below would be perfect. I make no claims, nor will I ever, to being an authority on all things Portland music, I’m just a schmuck doing the best I can! So let me know if you know about a cool show!
See you out there, comrades.
- dj zen_hound, host of WHOA THIS IS HEAVY on Freeform Portland Community Radio, Friday 2pm