This two-night metal festival, curated by metal and beer enthusiast Alexi Front (also the beer director for Kuma’s Corner restaurants), operates in both Chicago and Gothenburg, Sweden. In just seven years it has racked up an impressive ten installments. This year’s Chicago edition represents the heavy music of our hometown along with plenty of visitors. The lineup features two of our best exports, Lair of the Minotaur and Yakuza, with Swedish doom faves Monolord, who make their return following their ground-shaking performance at Scorched Tundra VI in 2016....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, July 25, 2017. ICE chief singles out Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, and Philadelphia as the “worst” sanctuary cities Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia are the “worst” sanctuary cities in the U.S., according to Thomas Homan, acting federal director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Washington Examiner reported on Monday. Homan singled out Chicago particularly, blaming the city’s gun violence on its and Cook County’s policy of harboring undocumented immigrants....

The Baffler has left us twice, the first time when it went on hiatus for three years and the second when its operations defected to Boston. But now it’s back—literally. Tomorrow the University of Chicago’s International House will host Their City and Ours: A Forum on Developmental Disorder, a live and Chicago-centric version of the magazine’s current issue in which there’s only one story that matters: Rick Perlstein’s salvo, “There Goes the Neighborhood: The Obama Library Lands in Chicago....

Mike Sula Half slab, Bro-N-Laws Bar-B-Que Which do you want first—the good news or the bad news? I wouldn’t be the self-flagellating grump I am if I didn’t seek out whatever new barbecue joints have popped up from month to month. So it’s time to catch up with two newer entrants into the field, and an older one that only recently pinged on my bar-b-dar. Mike Sula Pulled pork, Husky Hog Bar-B-Que Husky Hog Bar-B-Que graduated from a food truck to a small corner spot in Bridgeport with a few picnic tables inside and a small kitchen dominated by a Southern Pride offset smoker, which, when I visited, wasn’t giving off even a hint of aroma....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Nicole Woodcox Bolden, 33, doula. I’m a very hands-on doula, so I tend to be with my client from the time they leave their house until the time the baby comes out. I’m there to be support for mom mentally, to make sure she knows she can do it. I’m also a social worker, so I’m heavy on the mental stuff....

Last week, after a series of community meetings about the future of Jackson Park where some residents had been either shut out or effectively shut up, Fifth Ward alderman Leslie Hairston hosted an expanded ward meeting at the South Shore Cultural Center where everyone was offered the chance to talk. The center includes a superfluous building. As designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the center is to be a three-building complex grouped around a plaza—a bulky 180-foot tower that’ll house the Obama museum and two flat-topped one-story structures....

Last fall I wrote about the vitality of Chicago’s jazz and improvised music scene after discovering the playing of pianist Matt Piet, who’s part of a new wave of players melding the rigor of free improvisation with the oblique rhythms and harmony of 60s postbop. That soon led me to other locals on the rise, like tenor saxophonist Jake Wark and drummer Bill Harris, who work with Piet in a trio called Four Letter Words....

Let’s face it: American society has weird hang-ups about sleep. Be it in the workplace, academia, or supposedly public spaces, rest is either (a) a bought-and-paid-for private luxury or (b) a mark of indolence instead of, you know, one of the most fundamental biological necessities shared by literally every living being. But for people of color, some shut-eye in a car or park or Ivy League common room can be rewarded by encounters with paranoid Caucasian bystanders or hostile law enforcement....

A promotional image for Taylor Swift’s album 1989 Last night, 24-year-old pop powerhouse Taylor Swift released the second single from her forthcoming album, 1989. “Out of the Woods” takes a very different tone than the no-worries number “Shake It Off,” released last August—it’s a tense ballad with stark, punchy production. Big drums compete with Swift’s vocals in the foreground, while whispers of synth bass snake around the back. For a young songwriter who’s staked her claim in the pop world by writing flexible, athletic melodies, “Out of the Woods” is something of a sharp turn: its chorus pounds out just two notes bunched together in tight, dense syllables....

Midwestern Cuisine The Hazzard family have been farming in northeastern Illinois since they arrived in this country in 1847; for the past few generations, they’ve settled in Pecatonica, a small village just west of Rockford. During the first half of the 20th century, Marquis wheat was one of the most popular varietals of the grain in the midwest and Canada. So it’s entirely likely that Andy Hazzard is not the first Hazzard to grow Marquis wheat....

Hey, what are you doing right now? Nothing? Cool. How about you just listen to Commodores’ “Nightshift”? Nah? OK, got it. Are you sure you don’t want to listen to Commodores’ “Nightshift”? Because I kind of get the feeling that you want to listen to it. I mean, it’s a pretty great song. Oh, not your thing? Too 80s? Too cheesy? Sure, I understand. But wait, are you sure you don’t want to listen to “Nightshift”?...

Over time it’s become clear that Thurston Moore thrives on collaboration, and with the dissolution of Sonic Youth he’s managed to regain his footing as a bandleader with this lean quartet. While he’s been involved with countless side projects over his long career, it’s only now that he has a working band in which the members seem comfortable in their roles. The group’s recent second album, Rock n Roll Consciousness (Harvest/Caroline), reflects a deep ensemble dynamic, guitarist James Sedwards employing a twined attack that conjures the more outwardly psychedelic excursions he took with Lee Ranaldo—in fact, many of the extended solos on the new record reflect Ranaldo’s aesthetic more than Moore’s own predilection for noisy chaos....

Opening a pizza place a third of a mile from Spacca Napoli is a bold move—but then, ORD Pizzeria isn’t making Neapolitan-style pies. It’s difficult to say exactly what style of pizza they are making, though. Despite the name, it’s definitely not Chicago-style pizza, either deep dish or thin crust. Nor is it Greek or California style. It’s probably closest to New York style, but the crust isn’t as thin. Whatever you call it, though, it’s damn good pizza....

The connection between oral traditions and dance is a sturdy one. Not only is dancing believed to have been a way to transmit myths in ancient times—a kind of mnemonic device that uses the body to preserve epic stories in the mind—but oral transmission is, even today, the principal way newcomers to ballet companies learn centuries-old ballets. When Trosztmer encounters the machine, he comes unhinged—at the joints, not at the neurons—skating and gliding on his knees....

Michael Gebert Phillip Foss returns to his food truck—for one day. Once they were the future—food trucks, bringing innovative new tastes to the hungry masses of the Loop and other places where drab fast food dominated. It was Phillip Foss with Meatyballs Mobile and Matt Maroni with Gaztro-Wagon who led the movement to change the city’s laws and attitudes toward food trucks and make them the center of street-level culinary innovation, way back in 2010....

ARTIST: Daniel MacAdam SHOW: The National at Lollapalooza on Fri 8/2 MORE INFO: crosshairchicago.com

Chicago hip-hop had a tremendous year in 2016, but despite all the attention local artists got, plenty of great material didn’t see the spotlight. Among those unfairly overlooked releases was Free the Fall, the second mixtape from Bolingbrook-based rapper Jayaire Woods. He put it out through Quality Control, the Atlanta indie label that’s worked with Migos, Rich the Kid, and Lil Yachty. Woods opened Yachty’s solo tour last summer, and I wish he could’ve benefited even more from the rapid rise of the King of the Teens....

Courtesy Chicago Theatre Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

“Welcome to the Jungle,” reads a hand-painted sign on the front of the host stand at the Radler. It matches the pieces of plywood that adorn the walls, painted with fierce-looking images of a bear, a wolf, a chicken, and a boxing glove (artists from Galerie F, located next door to the restaurant, painted the wood when it was covering the outside of the building during renovations). That slightly expensive pretzel, shiny with a liberal coating of oil, is accompanied not by mustard but barley-malt butter and blackberry jam....

ARTIST: Dan Grzeca SHOW: Sturgill Simpson and Cris Jacobs at Metro on Fri 7/31 MORE INFO: dangrzeca.com