In Flames, All That Remains, Gojira, 36 Crazyfists

This tour brings together four artists representing a range of approaches to the project of fusing death metal with melody and pop songwriting. Openers 36 Crazyfists have been together since 1994, but as bands from Houston’s so-called “cultural wasteland” will no doubt understand, their career path was impeded somewhat by residing in Anchorage. (Quick, name another non-Jewel Alaskan musician.) Of the four, 36 Crazyfists branch out furthest from metal, with songs that show post-hardcore tendencies, and even some that resemble distant cousins of grunge ballads.

French eco-metal quartet Gojira hew closer to midtempo death metal. Bandleader Joe Duplantier almost never sings, sticking with a butch growl, except when he adds a distorted vocal overdub an octave up and sounds like an alien. Gojira’s music is intense, unadorned and brutally intelligent in a weird and aloof way that stands out here. Massachusetts’s All That Remains is sometimes almost retro in the use of power-metal techniques, though its roots are in the melodic death metal pioneered by headliners In Flames, usually credited among the originators of the “Gothenburg sound,” named after their Swedish hometown. The group’s latest, A Sense of Purpose, is death metal overlaid with flowing, harmonized guitar leads juxtaposed with metal-ized alt-rock, exemplifying the intriguing paradox of complex, heavy music pressed into the service of melodic and surprisingly accessible songs.