POP MUSIC REVIEW : Killdozer: Thick-Rock for Dream States

When you fall asleep in the back of a rock club at 3 in the morning, the Wisconsin power trio Killdozer is the music that you dream: vestigial pounding and low guitar drone, bass like what booms from your neighbor’s party downstairs after you’ve turned off all the lights and wrapped a pillow around your ears. Killdozer--emphasis on doze-- plays thick-rock; its current album, “12-Point Buck,” is something of an underground classic.

At Bogart’s on Wednesday, Killdozer’s narcoleptic drummer Dan Hobson looked ready to fall asleep at any moment; his beat was not so much powerful as deliberate. Frontman Michael Gerald intoned in a mutant cross between Laibach and the Fall’s Mark Smith, acerbic lyrics delivered in a guttural hell-voice. Though you can’t make out a word he says, you get the feeling of great intelligence from Gerald, the way you would watching a young man sweat his way through his Ph.D orals in a language you don’t understand. Performing is probably very therapeutic for him. Guitarist Bill Hobson entangled himself in his guitar strap as if it were seaweed, and then reconciled himself to playing with his teeth for a while.