Driven by guitarists/vocalists Sean Hoots and Andrew Gray, Hoots & Hellmouth's sound has relatives in the likes of The Hackensaw Boys, Old Crow Medicine Show and Drive-By Truckers. The group’s twangy, mandolin-rich style seems like a throwback to the Dust Bowl era, but the band members insist that they’re rooted in the present. They play the Southgate House.  

In "Root of the Industry," the opening track on the June release 'The Holy Open Secret,' Hoots & Hellmouth makes its seditious tendencies clear. Take a listen to this Roots Rock group without inspecting the lyrics and you might figure that their country-fried acoustic work is moonshine-making music without any teeth to it. That's not the case.  

Time has not been good to the arcade game. In the last decade, the accelerated pace of take-home technology has unarguably established consoles like the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360 as the video game’s dominant products, forcing the coin-operated game out of the market.  

Since debuting the Columbus Toy Show in 2003, James Ford and CTS Promotions have held pop culture conventions for six years. However, Sunday's event at the Sharonville Convention Center marks the company's first foray into Cincy. This family-friendly con will offer recent and vintage products: action figures from franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Transformers and G.I. Joe, dolls, cars by Hot Wheels and Matchbox, comic books, magazines, trading cards, models, trains and other miscellanea from the 1930s to the present. 9 a.m.-3 p.m.  

Russian Circles might very well be capturing the transmissions of a complex, little known galaxy far away. In crafting snaking, ornate instrumental passages with nary a word to be heard, the group’s material offers the possibility that they have special access to a distant away satellite and are using its transcendental signals to fuel their own imaginations. They play the Mad Hatter with Coliseum and Young Widows.  

Russian Circles This band is guitarist Mike Sullivan, bassist Brian Cook and drummer Dave Turncrantz, guys from Chicago who have done stints in intelligently aggressive acts like Botch and These Arms Are Snakes. Instead of being a cryptic allusion to a warhead or an intergalactic beacon, their moniker is a nod to a drill performed by the Russian ice hockey team when they skate in circles marked around the rink.  

The Damned have carved their reputation out of going about things in an off-kilter fashion. When they released the ebullient "New Rose" in 1976, it wasn't just their first single — it's usually credited as being the first Punk Rock single, period. In the same year, they snapped up a spot on the "Anarchy in the U.K. Tour" with The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers. As those other pioneers were gradually exterminated by drugs, The Damned kept going.   

The members of The Fall of Troy knew it was time for a break. As they reached the end of their touring cycle for 2007's 'Manipulator' album, the group was burned out on performing and still adjusting to the departure of bassist Tim Ward, who quit in November of that year due to stress. With a handful of rudimentary compositions already in the works for its next disc, the band spent about eight months removed from its music. The hiatus did them good.  

DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND THEIR CONTROL, THE DAMNED HAD TO CANCEL THEIR U.S. TOUR INCLUDING THEIR BOGART'S DATE.  

The Fall of Troy plays The Mad Hatter to support their fourth album, In the Unlikely Event, with Javelin Dance, The Paramedic, I Am The Messenger and Says The Suns.