Missed our live stream of PHILM's performance at TRI Studios? Watch videos of our favorite moments and the show in its entirety!

If you're looking for the standard demonic vocals and titanium-shredding guitars that made Slayer a metal mainstay, keep on walking. But if you're looking for a band with a unique sound to please both music snobs and life-long metal heads, LA-based PHILM delivers. Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo brought together bassist Pancho Tomaselli of War and singer/guitarist Gerry Nestler of Civil Defiance to form a genre-spanning power trio. The band integrates metal with elements of heavy 60s rock and modern psych topped off with endlessly impressive riffs and eye-gouging drums to create a sound Lombardo describes as "rhythmic emotion."

"The band's sound is channeled through the many different influences of drum and bass, expressionism, and underground, that ranges via ancient and indigenous to street," said Nestler. Given the background of each band member, their

Popular in-store appearances at the Louisiana Music Factory fill the gap between Jazz Fest weekends
April 26 - May 7

Barry Smith is fairly calm for a man nailing down the last-minute details for a special DVD-release event with the members of the HBO hit series "Treme," organizing a still-shifting line-up of presentations and appearances, handing out music advice, and dealing with the fact that the Rebirth Brass Band has just called in to report that a car accident will prevent them from performing a set that was scheduled to start five minutes ago.

Oh, did I mention that Smith's record store, the Louisiana Music Factory, where all this taking place, has been overrun by a hundred or two customers? Some are grasping to-go cups of draft beer from a bar down the street, others clutching an armful of hard-to-find albums grabbed from the store's formidable selection, still others just leaning on a rack in one of the couple rows that run the length of the slender store.

Snoop Dogg [Photo: Debi Del Grande]

The massive music cram session that was the Coachella Music Festival 2012 is officially over and we've survived! Seeing the festival out, headliners Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre gave a phenomenal performance, despite it being identical to the one they did the weekend prior, superstar guests and all. While it's completely normal to repeat sets and even on-stage chatter for the multiple shows on a tour, there was something about the new fangled-ness of a two-weekend Coachella that had fans expecting something different the second time around. Nevertheless, watching Snoop and Dre perform their classics like "Nuthin' but a G Thang," "Gin and Juice" and "California Love," (which one would expect the Tupac hologram to appear for) was an unmatchable experience. But an unexpected disappointment occurred when the tilted glass contraption lowered and the much-awaited Tupac hologram rose up on stage. For some odd reason, the crowd seemed underwhelmed by the appearance, cheering surprisingly little considering the hype surrounding the resurrection last weekend. In fact, after hologram Tupac dissipated into the afterlife, Dre had some difficulty getting the crowd to give it up for Tupac, having to call out three times for the audience to make some noise with little success.

"Hologram" Biggie Smalls [Photo: Debi Del Grande]

Congratulations, we've survived another day at the 104-degree Coachella Music Festival! The spirit of one-upsmanship was more apparent on Saturday as acts flexed their rolodexes to bring out some more surprise guests. But it seems the best guest stars have been the ones who are not really there. The Black Lips, in a very successful attempt to top their last set when lead singer Cole Alexander dropped trou and played his guitar with his wing wang, made a bid that even Snoop and Dre will have to work to top: A "hologram" Biggie Smalls. Well, not so much a hologram as a life-sized cardboard cutout of the deceased rapper. But hey, hologram Tupac was 2D as well, and as the band pointed out, their "hologram" you can actually touch! The cutout danced around to Smalls' "Hypnotize" as the crowd sang along and the rowdy Atlanta-based band shotgunned some more beers. Not bad for the achingly early 2:15pm slot, and not as painful to watch as junk hitting guitar strings.