The Red & Black’s guide to music in Athens and Austin March 24-26.

Zero One One Two Three: Five Eight

Five Eight has tried to break up. It probably succeeded a couple times; it did at least once for a few hours.

Bassist Dan Horowitz will tell you he saved the day that time: “I was like Abraham Lincoln. I pulled us back together.”

Over its 20-year career, Five Eight has lost members, got them back, struggled with drugs and depression, bad record deals, even friends’ deaths. Through it all, it has continued on as one of Athens’ most exciting and emotionally raw acts.

So when you hear its new album strays from songwriter Mike Mantione’s usual desperate introspection toward love and politics of all things, it may seem a little surprising.

“There’s not many love songs from Five Eight, and there’s zero politics songs,” said Mantione. “So I wanted to write a record that was just strictly love and politics songs.”

So that’s what the band did. But instead of an album of protest-anthems, it made “Your God is Dead to Me Now,” the band’s seventh release that maintains Mantione’s personal style in a different form.

“What is different is that Mike keeps the raw intensity, but the source is much wider,” Horowitz said. “It’s not all in his own head; it’s got a global reach.”

That raw intensity is what has made Five Eight one of Athens’ most revered rock acts since its start in 1988.

Throughout the band’s releases, Mantione’s dissonant, grungy songs have been drenched in harsh lyrics often dealing with depression, drug abuse and death. The passion in those songs translates into frantic, exciting live shows, at some points more than 200 a year.

With this release, the band members feel like they’ve finally figured out how to transfer their live-energy infused songs to a record, and that seems to be giving them a revived zeal toward the band as a whole.

“It’s taken us all this time to even begin to learn how to do this,” Horowitz said. “Finally I think we’re starting to get a handle on how to record in a studio.”

With the core band back together for the first time in more than a decade (Sean Dunn, guitar, and Patrick Ferguson, drums, departed around 1998), this newest release presented the opportunity to the more experienced band to make the record it had always wanted to.

“This is actually the first album we did, just the four of us, from beginning to end,” said Ferguson, who also produced and engineered the newest release. “In a way it’s the first Five Eight record that was kind of all our ball game.”

According to Ferguson, a well-known local producer and musician who has performed in numerous bands and worked in several studios, the time the musicians could spend on the record and techniques they’d picked up over the years allowed them to produce the live sound they’d been chasing since their first release.

“People get confused about what makes live performances exciting,” he said. “What it is is an emotional immediacy to it, and I was looking for the most emotionally immediate take.”

But it took time. Lots of time. It’s been six years, actually, since its last release.

In those years, the album was recorded twice, Mantione explained, because Mike Rizzi, the band’s drummer since 1999, moved away in 2007. So when Dunn and Ferguson rejoined the band after that, they started recording from scratch … in between the rest of their lives.

“We took a long time to make this record but it wasn’t because we were in there 12 hours a day mining for good takes,” Ferguson said. “We were jamming time in on weekends and after work, after kids were put to bed, late dinner then go to the studio and start sessions at ten o’clock at night and go to four in the morning.”

At this point, it must be asked, how? Or maybe even more so, why?

Why push through all of the hard times for 20 years and continue on when so many bands just give up on the struggle of making records, the long drives of touring, the promoting, the booking, all of it?

“You didn’t start a band like this in 1988 to get rich and famous. You didn’t expect to even make much more of a living than a modest one at best,” Ferguson said. “These guys were gonna be in a rock band like Five Eight whether it was a profitable endeavor or not. Whatever happens with fate and money and all that is external to these guys’ fierce, burning desire to make art.”

FIVE EIGHT

When: Saturday at 9:30 p.m.

Where: Caledonia Lounge

Price: $5 (21+), $7 (18+)

Also playing: Easter Island, Little Horn

Best of the West: Music Notes’ week-long South by Southwest marathon condensed into one page

Since the late 1980s when it began, South by Southwest has become one of the biggest music festivals in the world. Thousands of bands from across the country stream to Austin, Texas, for the festival every year, playing multiple shows a day, promoting themselves and trying to get picked up by industry representatives.

Last week, Music Notes traveled to Austin along with the tidal wave of bands to be immersed in the cacophony. Long days filled with band after band, club after club, street cart taco after street cart taco.

For some, it was overwhelming. Many brave music soldiers were lost amongst the mosh pits. For others, it was a melodic paradise. For most, it was a good dose of both.

Here are some of the highlights that I got to see throughout the week. For full, day-by-day coverage, check the Music Notes blog at www.redandblack.com.

Most insanely fun/incredibly ridiculous live show

Photo by Chris Miller | The Red & Black

Peelander-Z

This band … wow, this band. It’s from Japan, spends a lot of time in New York and its show is the quintessential mix of the two. The music is straight punk, child-like in sound and lyrics, lots of chants meant solely to get the crowd screaming along (“Ninja

High School” and “Mad Tiger” seem to be the hits).

But the actual show is just a like a Japanese game show. Wild showmanship, constant crowd-surfing/walking, limbo and jump rope in the middle of the audience, human bowling, passing out pots and pans

to fans to beat along to the music … And of course, the insane outfits to match the on-stage personas of Peelander Yellow, Red, Green, Black and Pink. Pink doesn’t actually even play — she’s like a hype-woman who conducts the madness. It’s pretty much impossible to not take part in the experience, whether getting dragged onstage and handed a guitar or landed on by a flying band member.

Not a night to soon be forgotten.

Best musical imagery of a southeast Asian war

Naam

Most bands from Brooklyn that I hear about are new wave indie bands, riding the next big wave as far as it’ll take them. Naam is not riding any wave. Its heavy, psychedelic, sludge-rock sounds like anything but the beach, unless you’re storming the beach. Naam’s music is eerie, demonic, but also sort of ethereal. I can’t say for sure that the members were going for a Vietnam reference with their band name, but once you think of that, the imagery is unavoidable. The music sounds like the howls and thunder of war heard from beneath a muddy ditch filled with heroin. It references old school psychedelic metal but adds a new element of grungy, dissonant tones. Haunting? Yes. Rock ’n’ roll? More so than any band I’ve seen in a while.

Weirdest introduction that led to a totally funky dance party

Quintron and Miss Pussycat

This pair are what I consider the unofficial king and queen of the New Orleans indie art scene, and the music/art it produces is a perfect product of that status. The show opens with a 15-20 minute puppet show, the actors being designed by Miss Pussycat and matched up with demonic synthesized voices. The show I saw was something about Magic Pizza. Then the duo come out from behind the curtain, Quintron mans his keyboards and home-made electro-noise machine the “Drum Buddy” to produce some of the funkiest, swamp-tronic dance music ever, and Miss Pussycat grabs some maracas. Only New Orleanians can party in such an absurd, awesome manner.

Best performance that, if you closed your eyes, you’d have no idea what was going on onstage

Colin Stetson

I got this guy’s album a while back, “New History Warfare, Volume 2: Judges,” and thought, “Whoa, those are some weird dudes making a lot of weird horn sounds.” In person though, you realize that it is JUST Colin Stetson and a saxophone, sometimes a giant baritone, sometimes a little alto. With just one horn, he managed to make several layers of whirling sounds, from throaty growls to dizzy honks and squeaks. Essentially he creates a basic rhythm track with the horn, including the clicks of the buttons, and layers a melody of sorts on it with his throat. Recorded, it sounds mostly digital, like somethingplayed backwards. When you see it though, Stetson is struggling with his saxophone to create sounds that I honestly didn’t think could be made by any instrument. It’s the kind of music that shakes your psyche and your gut.

Best ‘Just got out of the van from driving cross country’ look/sound

Mythological Horses

What an absolutely wonderfully, terribly grungy set. From the rainy land of Portland,

Ore., comes the entirely irreverent, “I wouldn’t give an empty PBR can to hear what

you think,” grunge punk duo Mythological Horses. It sounded like the straight-up speed

of pop punk, left to fester in an Oregon gutter somewhere since 1994. Then it grew mold all over it and out of that grew a guitarist and a drummer ready to go onstage and put something together. The musicians didn’t even bother being absurd and running off stage. They stood there, banging their heads out of pure need for the adrenaline, and rocked out until they were completely rocked out. Then it was right back into the van.

THURSDAY

Caledonia Lounge

10 p.m., $5 (21+), $7 (18+)

Manray

Math rock whose technique winds it up tight only to explode with energy.

The Bronzed Chorus

Instrumental electro-shimmers and big, heavy rock breaks

Kenosha Kid

Genre-bending originals driven by jazz philosophies

New Earth Music Hall

9 p.m.

MiMOSA

Post-Skynet breakbeat; synthetic industrial

Mindelixir

Grimy, fat club beats with sparse samples

Sub Shanti

Trip hop with layered electro-noise

Sleepyhead

Caribbean-rhythm infused house music includes jazzy samples

Flicker Theatre & Bar

8:30 p.m., $5

Patrick Morales

Singer-songwriter and head of new band The Viking Progress plays solo

Pearl and the Beard

Dramatic harmonies, acoustic guitar, cello and floor tom create melancholic folk

Jeremy Wheatley

Minimal indie folk from the porch of an empty country home

The Melting point

9 p.m., $10 in adv.

Kevin Devine

Minimal, melancholy Ameri-pop rock

Hardy Morris

Dead Confederate’s front man solo set

River City Extension

Wound-up party folk with strings and horns

FRIDAY

40 Watt Club

9 p.m., $10 in adv.

Surfer Blood

Melodic pop plus grunge surf

Holiday Shores

Edgy, dissonant beach pop

The Dewars

Ocean at the edge of the earth Brit rock/folk

Quiet Hooves

Local freakpoppers release new LP “Saddle Up”

Caledonia Lounge

9:30 p.m., $5 (21+), $7 (18+)

Lazer/Wulf

Instrumental tech metal whose evil will drive you mad if its skills don’t

Consider the Source

Brooklyn three-piece plays “Sci-fi Middle Eastern funk.” Wow.

Sorry No Ferrari

Fiercely technical instrumental math rock that will wear you out just hearing it

Eatliz

Israeli melancholic acoustic rock with some tech-rock leads

Farm 255

11 p.m., free

The Extraordinaires

Grungy honky-tonk party folk from Philly

Tumbleweed Stampede

Huge fun live, hyper-energetic dance-folk pop

Flicker Theatre & Bar

9 p.m., $5

The Horns of Happiness

Organ-heavy experimental drone-pop

Kara Kildare

Raspy-voiced, gothic, visceral piano folk

Lady Lazarus

Minimalist piano-vocals songstress with definitely quirky vibes

Titans of Filth

Experimental, talk-sung indie-folk-pop

SATURDAY

40 Watt

9 p.m., $11 in adv.

Mike Watt + The Missingmen

Punk rock with an Elvis snarl

J. Roddy Walston and the Business

Backwoods blues Southern roots rock

Caledonia Lounge

See “Zero One One Two Three”

Ciné BarCafé

“WUOG Roboprom 3000”

9 p.m., $1

The Gold Party

Electro-disco dance pop, lots of synths and singalong melodies

Dr. Squid

Catchy pop songs with a ’90s garage sound

Prophets & Kings

Electro-big beat experimental noise dance indie

Farm 255

11 p.m., free

Sumilan

Reverb filled jam rock; mellow and danceable

Flicker Theatre $ Bar

8:30 p.m., $5

Thayer Sarrano

Whispy vocals on a stark Western musical landscape

Hank Sullivant

Former MGMT and Whigs member, current Kuroma front-man solo set