Our Picks Recommended

MAKE, Solar Halos 

Hard-riffing Chapel Hill doom duo The Curtains of Night played its last show in August 2010, at The Reservoir's Ragnarok Weekend. They subsequently entered hiatus as guitarist Nora Rogers started grad school at UNC. By the time she found time to play again, Curtains drummer Lauren Fitzpatrick had joined Bitter Resolve. So Rogers started playing with the perpetually busy John Crouch—drummer of Horseback, Airstrip and Caltrop—when her schedule permitted. Last fall, they brought in Fin Fang Foom and Bellafea bassist Eddie Sanchez and began practicing in earnest. Tonight they make their live debut.

"We didn't lay out too many aesthetic guidelines other than dark and heavy but not abrasive," she says. Rogers' jaw-dropping guitar acrobatics were central to Curtains, but she wanted to focus more on vocals with Solar Halos. "Eddie was a natural choice since he sings and plays bass."

With its pulsing, meditative riffs, Solar Halos offers some echoes of Horseback, a band in which Rogers briefly played. She has dropped the fierce vocals and high-test pummel of Curtains for a bluesy, plaintive—though equally powerful—approach.

Headliners MAKE, whose drone-metal masterpiece Trephine was one of 2011's most exciting local records, celebrate that album's vinyl release tonight. . —Corbie Hill