Music runs hot – and cool

Summer is reaching full boil, and you know what the means: It's time to sweat and get stinky in the name of heavy metal.

So you'll find plenty of burly, shirtless dudes today at the Sleep Train Amphitheatre for the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. It's a throwdown of metal that starts at 2 p.m. and stretches into the evening, featuring such hesher favorites as Slipknot, Disturbed and the twin-guitar madness of DragonForce.

Ozzfest is the usual must-see summer festival for local metalheads. But not so fast there, headbanger. Ozzfest is taking the year off from the touring circuit and will instead be a one-day event Aug. 9 near Dallas, featuring Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne himself.

So the metal masses of the greater Sacramento area will get their fix of mosh pits and cranked guitars at this Rockstar fest. And this bad boy of a concert features three stages that'll howl with tortured vocals, plus enough guitar wattage to be heard throughout the hinterlands of Yuba County.

Also expect plenty of corporate signage. Along with festival sponsors Rockstar Energy Drink, which will keep the hordes fueled with taurine and caffeine via free samples, Hot Topic, Jagermeister and XBox will also court the heavy metal demographic.

And the whole deal will come to a head, with a one-two whammy on the main stage from Disturbed and Slipknot. Guitars will go "chunk-chunk-chunk" and it'll be a sea of devil horn salutes. m/

Southern rock opera

So the saga goes like this ... after the 1977 plane crash that took the lives of members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the remaining band members went on hiatus but re-formed in 1987. But this version of Lynyrd Skynyrd refused to play "Free Bird," the band's signature song, out of respect to its fallen members. But that all changed one night in the early 1990s, during a concert at Arco Arena. Lynyrd Skynyrd dusted off "Free Bird" for the first time since 1977, and it's been nothing but "yee-haws!" and beer cup salutes since.

The legends of Southern rock perform tonight at Raley Field (400 Ballpark Drive, West Sacramento), and yup, you can bet they'll play "Free Bird." The show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $45 - $75. For more information: (916) 649-8497 (TicketMaster).

Smoothed out

Then again, if a weekend featuring Slipknot and Lynyrd Skynyrd sounds like too many mullets for your oh-so- sophisticated taste, there's always the smooth jazz show on Saturday at the Radisson Hotel (500 Leisure Lane, Sacramento). The concert will feature the soothing and civilized sounds of Richard Elliot and Rick Braun. With a glass of cool chardonnay and a Delta breeze (if you're lucky), you'll be in bourgeois nirvana.

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 - $54. For more information: (916) 922-2020.

One more for the road

Bridges was once a band from Sacramento, but it bolted for Seattle. The indie-rock group is coming back to its former hometown and celebrating the release of its CD, "By Sunlight," on Saturday at the Blue Lamp (1400 Alhambra Blvd., Sacramento) Oh, and looks like Bridges recently changed its band name to By Sunlight as well, so there you go.

The show also features a who's-who of leading indie-rock bands from Sacramento: An Angle, Bright Light Fever and the Definite Articles.

The music starts at 9 p.m. Admission is $8. For more information: (916) 455-3400.

Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival

WITH: Slipknot, Disturbed, DragonForce, Mastodon, Machine Head, Underoath, many more

WHEN: 2 p.m. today

WHERE: Sleep Train Amphitheatre (2677 Forty Mile Road, Wheatland)

TICKETS: $19.75-$49.50

INFORMATION: (916) 649-8497 (TicketMaster)

About the writer:

• Call Bee pop music critic Chris Macias, (916) 321-1253. Read his postings on pop music at www.sacbee.com/21Q.