Bannon’s listeners haven’t all survived harrowing ordeals, but they seize his lines as cathartic outlets for their own frustrations and disappointments. Spectators chanted the line “I’ll take my love to the grave” as if these words were their own heartfelt sentiments. Bannon frequently yielded the microphone to fans, a crowd-pleasing gesture that didn’t negatively affect the musical output, given the ease of replicating monosyllabic grunts.

When not shouting along, Converge fans formed violently churning circle pits. When one dude in a hooded sweatshirt knelt to catch his breath, another pragmatically timed a running jump so that he bounded off his unsuspecting assistant’s back and onto the stage. It was an acrobatic reversal of the usual, constant flow of stage-diving traffic.

Converge merges hardcore with thrash and prog-metal fusion, a combination that still sounds futuristic some sixteen-plus years after the group pioneered the “metalcore” hybrid approach. Guitarist Kurt Ballou, who played a gloomy riff while standing alone on stage to open the set, shreds his way through hyper-speed leads and hits ringing, lingering notes that serve as surrogate melodies. Bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller comprise one of heavy music’s most versatile rhythm sections. The zealous Bannon provides the perfect emotional complement to all this daunting technical proficiency, a human heart throbbing inside an extreme-metal android’s impenetrable shell.

By contrast, The Red Chord played competent metalcore but lacked any compelling personality. Numbingly pugnacious vocalist Guy Kozowyk channeled Pantera’s Phil Anselmo and other tough-guy frontmen, baiting fans into mosh-pit action with “come on, you fucking pussies.” He displayed mild creativity by rephrasing standard crowd commands: “Jump” became “pick up your fucking feet” and “wave your hands” morphed into “get those stinky pits in the air.” He also blurted non sequiturs (“Some of you guys are wearing shorts,” “People’s court”) during the seconds of expectant silence before the group’s breakdowns detonated, a technique local product Dustin Albright used with better results during his stint with Eyes of the Betrayer.

If Converge represents heavy music’s ahead-of-its-time future and The Red Chord personifies its generic present, then Baroness flashes back to its ‘70s roots, delivering heavy doses of Southern swamp-rock grooves and dual-guitar harmonies. Fronted by longhaired, bearded singer/guitarist John Baizley, whose full-faced screams generated surprisingly tuneful results, the Georgia-based group linked sludgy tunes with echoing instrumental segues, closing each rock-block with massive drum-roll endings. In a move that boosted the band’s bad-ass rating, Baizley somehow headbanged himself bloody, opening a cut that trickled between his wild eyes during the band’s final song.

Genghis Tron offers a glimpse at the stripped-down touring group of tomorrow, presaging an era when bands will delegate rhythm-section responsibilities to keyboard programming to reduce travel expenses. (Gas costs could even make hip-hop crews trim their entourages; sidekicks might be alarmed to hear about the “hype button,” which Genghis Tron used to produce variations on the exclamation “yeeeeaaaah!”) While the group sacrifices the excitement inherent in watching a metal drummer pound out blast beats, it doesn’t lose any velocity in its transition to electronic grindcore. The trio recouped some stage-show flash by incorporating pulsing columns of multi-colored light, and enhanced its visual-instrumental appeal with guitarist Hamilton Jordan’s two-hand tapping solos. Vocalist Mookie Singerman (!) alternated deftly between harsh screeches and dark new-wave crooning, but sadly he couldn’t convince a crowd that was saving its energy for the headliner to follow his “form a Star of David in the pit” instructions.