Close Call : Dial-7 Escaped the Laguna Floods to Drench a Packed House in High-Energy, Style-Hopping Rap-Rock

Bad weather stormed into Laguna Canyon and made for tragic news; while the community recovers, maybe it can take small comfort in a powerful and positive band storming out of the canyon with a chance to make news of its own.

Headlining Saturday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, Dial-7 didn’t get a chance to dry out. The packed house and the band’s athletic onstage energy and fast-paced combination of rap, hard rock and reggae kept the humidity high.

Most of Dial-7’s members share a house that survived the recent flooding. Its canyon locale figures into their musical iconography: One number describing Dial-7’s ‘hood spoke of “the 133,” the road number for Laguna Canyon Road, in almost mystical terms. Pausing from tireless racing about, rapper Shaun “Shauny B” Baxstrum plugged the collection being taken to help a longtime staffer at the Galaxy’s sister club, the Coach House, whose boyfriend died in last week’s mudslides.

Dial-7 has known tragedy itself: Rapper Stephen “Kid Bone” Lord was killed in a 1996 car wreck, before the band finished its striking, do-it-yourself debut CD, “. . . Yesterday Was Allday.” Most of the successful recent exports from Orange County play ska-rock that means nothing; Dial-7’s themes are large and worthy--about trying to stay afloat through personal setbacks and societal tensions. “Gotta fight for the right to freedom,” went one embattled chorus, as if in answer to rap-rock’s most famous call to buffoonery, the Beastie Boys’ “You gotta fight for your right to party.”

Dial-7’s approach was anything but ponderous. The two front men, Shauny B, whose darting speed and heedlessness in hurling his body might interest an NFL team in need of a kick return man, and Michael Lord, large in physical and vocal size, each could carry a band on his own. Shauny B had a good, piercing rap delivery, while Lord alternated between singsong reggae toasting and full-on, husky-voiced rock singing.

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About half of the 70-minute show clicked, including all of the stuff from the CD. But like other worthy style-hopping bands such as Fishbone and Faith No More, Dial-7 faces the special challenge of shaping songs into cohesive wholes rather than having them come off like formless, herky-jerk gear-shifting. At the Galaxy, the outpouring of energy without a consistent focus became exhausting, and about half the house had left by the time Dial-7 finished its late-running set with a rousing anthem, “Power of the 7.”

What’s needed are consistently strong melodic hooks and rapped catch-phrases, coupled with good instrumental ideas, from the sometimes Hendrix-leaning, sometimes Police-like rock power-trio supporting the front men. That is no easy task when the musical feel changes so frequently in a single song. On “All I Want,” the refrain carrying the big pop hook seemed forced and out of place.

Dial-7’s co-managers say the band expects to choose soon among several major-label offers. Maybe getting their new material down on record again will help everything coalesce.

A major label’s imprimatur is no certification of quality, as Kottonmouth Kings’ second-billed set proved. The band from Placentia does goofball white boy rap, taking cues from the early Beastie Boys, and picking up Cypress Hill’s lyrical fetish for odes to pot-smoking. The Kings’ upcoming debut on Capitol, “Stoners Reek Havok,” offers some very guilty pleasures (besides marijuana, the songs speak to mindless sex and mindless rebellion), but those didn’t translate to the stage.

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The three rappers, including Brad Xavier, last seen fronting the spirited punk band Humble Gods, failed to come up with the contrasting voicings and interplay to justify three rappers. “Bump” achieved house-rocking clout, but the catchy single, “Suburban Life,” which echoes House of Pain’s “Jump Around,” had far less bounce to the ounce than the recorded version.

Kottonmouth Kings’ one innovation was to substitute a hulking presence named Pakalika for the usual limber hip-hop dancers. The poor fellow was a cross between a bandaged Claude Rains in “The Invisible Man” and a lumbering Boris Karloff in “Frankenstein.” Maybe a vampire bite from the Michael Jackson of “Thriller” would cure what ailed this creaky, robotic figure.

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The Orangemen, another Orange County band that opened the show, are the new incarnation of Rubber, a promising punk-pop foursome that has turned into an equally promising trio. They put some ‘90s hard-rock heft behind vocals and tunes that recalled David Bowie, circa “Ziggy Stardust” and “Aladdin Sane.”

Matt Borden, the bass player who prefers the stage name Eberle, has taken over the singing from the recently fired Kerri Kelli. Although the sound mix and emphasis on muscle over detail made it impossible to decipher most of the lyrics, the songs had that old glam-rock-era aura of real feeling breaking through a veneer of jaded decadence.

Borden, drummer Keith Alan and guitarist Jason Weeks were a massive-sounding but never-leaden rhythm team. But the trio approach left a huge gap in the sonic foreground where a Mick Ronson-ish lead guitar and/or a jangling, Ian Hunter-style piano would sound just right.