This is hardly news, but it bears repeating every so often: Houston's punk, indie and noise communities, accustomed to being ignored or spurned outright by the more staid elements of the local music scene, have long cultivated an underground network of venues — mostly private residences and warehouses — that regularly fill up with people who found out about the shows on KTRU, online or just saw a flyer at Sound Exchange (see also the weeks-old Saturday Secret Shows series at the Shady Tavern in the Heights, and next week's six-band We Are the Hollow Men warehouse art opening/blowout at 1620 Keene St.).
Saturday, venerable DIY venue Southmore House, currently bunking up with East End/OST all-purpose creative space Bill Hicks Resurrection Laboratories, hosts a hefty cross-section of Texas punk for Punx-Mas Fest 3: Metal-tinged Arlington thrashers Unit 21, Corpus Christi's beer-soaked snarlers Drastic Actions, the scattergun guitars of Richmond's Rats in the Attic, Austin's vein-popping Exile and their ragged-throat, vintage-SoCal neighbors The 13th Victim, and San Antone Johnny Cash worshippers Hellbound Herse. Houston classic-hardcore bleaters Absence of Change, psychobilly poltergeists Ghost Storys, spirit-of-'77 true believers Deathbed Repentance and boisterous ska-baiting crew Molotov Compromise play the not-so-gracious hosts. Really now, what would the holidays be without a little BYOB one-two-three-four underneath the mistletoe?
