Coming in loud

For 10 years, Ozzfest was every mega-decibel addict’s one-stop shop for heavy metal music during the summer, a chance to experience the requisite banging of heads and the brandishing of devil’s horns to the quarry-mining accompaniment of a handful of hard rock bands in a festival setting.

But even rear guard movements start to grow gray sideburns after a while, and this year’s Ozzfest, which features a reunion of Black Sabbath as well as Judas Priest and Velvet Revolver, resembles something Dick Clark might produce. (Are the American Mook Awards far behind?)

Don’t lose hope, metalheads: There are new monsters of rock on the block, bands that have ramped up the fear factor, applied WD-40 to their bass drum pedals for maximum beat fibrillation and are staking claim to the new generation of noise mongers with a stake right through the heart. It’s the inaugural Sounds of the Underground tour, a traveling freak show featuring many of the best young metal bands in the country. Bands such as High on Fire, Clutch, Poison the Well, Chimaira and headliner Lamb of God pulled themselves up from their studded bootstraps and slogged through basement shows and Elk’s lodges until they slowly but surely harvested fresh ear-share with their six-string scythes.

The Sounds of the Underground lineup represents the dream of a certain type of young, passionate metal fan that trolls Internet sites like MySpace.com, DigitalMetal.com and PureVolume.com in search of the latest MP3s to download, peruses magazines like Revolver to read up on the bands and endures hours of liver- and kidney-rattling rock as a kind of cleansing ritual into the brotherhood of extreme metal conscripts, which is growing by the month.

The tour, which rumbles into the Los Angeles Sports Arena on Friday, is the brainchild of four prime movers in this incipient but rapidly expanding scene -- the House of Blues, management firm Entertainment Services Unlimited, booking agency Face the Music and metal label Ferret Records. These four companies have tried to create an anti-Ozzfest vibe for their tour, keeping ticket prices within reason and emphasizing the music rather than corporate sponsorship.

“We looked at some tours like the Ozzfest, Tattoo the Earth and Warped and figured out what they did wrong and what they did right,” said Ferret Records President Carl Severson, whose company is handling marketing for Sounds of the Underground. “We wanted to make sure that kids could get in with low ticket prices, and really target our specific audience, so they knew what was going on.”

Indeed, Sounds of the Underground’s fee of $29.50 is in line with Warped ($30) and below the cheapest of tickets for Ozzfest ($35 for lawn seats) on Aug. 20 at the sprawling Hyundai Pavilion at Glen Helen.

It’s all about stealth marketing with these bands -- building e-mail lists through the Internet, sending out newsletters to keep fans abreast of the tour, then relying on word of mouth to get the message across. Marketing wiles are crucial for this subgenre, which tends to get the cold shoulder from mainstream radio and TV, and thus must rely on its wits and the strength of the music itself to carry the message.

“The mainstream hasn’t caught up yet, but it’s growing,” said Severson. “The one way all these bands has built their fan bases is through constant touring.”

Lamb of God, ostensibly the Metallica-in-training of this burgeoning scene, is a typical success story for the new-new metal. Schoolmates at Virginia Commonwealth University, band members sweated their chops, practicing five days a week and playing whatever gigs they could scrounge up. They released their first record, “New American Gospel,” on metal label Prosthetic Records in 2000 and just kept touring.

Now, five years later, they find themselves headlining this tour and selling more than 300,000 copies of “Ashes of the Wake,” their major label debut for Epic Records.

“A lot of the bands on this tour are bands that we’ve crossed paths with over the years,” Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler says. “We’re all coming from the same place.”

He attributes the rising popularity of the new metal genre to the fans: “You see people posting on message boards from all over the world. In Europe, where our record label didn’t give us much support, we have sold out huge venues.”

Sounds of the Underground bands like Lamb of God, Opeth and Every Time I Die would make a boomer Sabbath fan cringe. Loud, fast, abrasive and impossibly proficient, usually topped off with baleful vocals of the kind “The Fantastic Four’s” Thing might attempt during one of his ornery hissy fits, it’s an adrenaline shot delivered straight to the cranium. Well-schooled in the speed metal of Slayer and the straight-edge punk of Minor Threat, these bands deliver metal with a conscience, burying messages about social justice underneath all of that clamor.

“We’re not trying to preach to anyone; people have a right to interpret the song as they see fit,” Adler says. “But it’s nice when people understand it.”

It’s easy for the messages to get mixed in the miasma. Lamb of God was prohibited from playing a supporting slot for Slipknot on April 9 at the Forum because the venue’s owners, the Faithful Central Bible Church, took offense to the band’s former name, Burn the Priest. But insensitive heretics they’re not.

In addition to the requisite merch merchants, the Sounds of the Underground will feature a booth from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, thus deflecting any criticism about this pernicious metal rotting the minds of impressionable fans like so much Red Bull. There’s even a local Christian metal band called Norma Jean on the bill.

Ultimately, of course, the Sounds of the Underground’s main objective isn’t to eradicate drug testing on lab animals, but to melt the asphalt in the Sports Arena parking lot and provide as much mosh madness as is humanly possible.

“This is the next wave of aggressive metal music,” Severson says. “We’re looking to grow this style, because we think it’s the most exciting music around.”

Marc Weingarten can be reached at weekend@ latimes.com.

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Sounds of the Underground

What: Tour featuring Lamb of God, Clutch, Poison the Well, Opeth, From Autumn to Ashes, Unearth, Chimaira, Norma Jean, Every Time I Die, Throwdown, Strapping Young Lad, All That Remains, others

When: 11 a.m. Friday

Where: Sports Arena parking lot, 3939 S. Figueroa, L.A.

Price: $29.50

Info: www.soundsoftheundergroundtour.com