Rusted Shut performs at Silent Barn tonight

When I was pudgy, pimply, and vertically challenged, that is, in high school, in Houston, in the late 1980s, and trying my damnedest to find music I could relate to (which was a difficult task in those times if you were neither terribly interested in hardcore or new wave), a local band, Grindin’ Teeth, was the opening act for all of the more interesting touring bands from the noisier end of the spectrum â€" from Sonic Youth to the Butthole Surfers. While they were also on the grungier vanguard of culture that would soon dominate the sound of the 1990s, Grindin’ Teeth were, unlike these more renowned contemporaries, far more inaccessibly cacophonous â€" even including the screech of a feeding back violin (or was it a viola?).

Don and Sybil, a couple who were both part of Grinding Teeth, started a slower, heavier, more stripped-down, and even noisier, side-project, Rusted Shut. As Grinding Teeth fell apart, Rusted Shut, who at the time claimed to be informed by Godflesh, but approached density from a far looser, more reckless, I-don’t-give-a-fuck perspective, began developing a small but loyal local following consisting almost exclusively of members of Houston’s finest underground groups.

My bands from Austin wound up on bills with them a couple of times, and they always managed to figure out a way to completely destroy everything: their songs, our eardrums, the stage, and one an