Do It: 2016 Hawaii MetalFest, Sublime with Rome

SATURDAY

Crown the Empire to head MetalFest

Heavy metal fans can have a head-banging good time at the 2016 Hawaii MetalFest. Headlining the event is the Dallas-based metalcore group Crown the Empire, which has been on a successful run on this summer’s Vans Warped Tour.

The band, which was formed in 2010 by a group of high school friends, has a somewhat clean-cut appearance compared to other metal bands. Its music can have a softer side, such as its rather plaintive, acoustic version of the Christmas classic “Let It Snow.” Even some of its more confrontational work, such as “Johnny’s Rebellion,” has a more lyrical side before transitioning into the traditional screamfest.

Crown the Empire sometimes takes a themed approach to its music, as on its second album, “The Resistance: Rise of the Runaways,” (2014) which had a post-dystopian nightmarish feel. It reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200 charts.

The festival also features three stages featuring Hawaii bands including Anti Matter, Beware The Bear, Censor This, Cesspool Democracy, Cvltists, Enders, Out of Bounds, Rotten Blossom, The Even Odders and Trials and Under The Black.

THURSDAY

Benson continues to prove ‘Nothing’s Going to Change’

The great guitar player and singer-songwriter George Benson returns to Honolulu on Thursday. Judging from his appearance here last year, he’s lost none of the energy that took him to the top of the charts back in the ’70s and ’80s.

Classic tunes like “This Masquerade” and “On Broadway” floated through Blaisdell Concert Hall, with Benson’s sweet semi-falsetto still perfectly in tune. His ability to improvise licks on the guitar and scat sing was still at its height. He also gave due recognition to local talent when he discussed the song “Nothing’s Going to Change My Love for You,” a tune that island musician Glenn Medeiros took to the Top 10 on the Billboard charts.

Benson, an off-and-on resident of Pittsburgh, has received 10 Grammy Awards, including one for “Breezin,’” which is considered the first jazz album in history to go platinum. Last year saw the release of an “ultimate collection” of his greatest hits including “The Greatest Love of All” and a duet “When I Fall in Love” with Idina Menzel. But you might also want to check out his 2013 release “Inspiration,” dedicated to Nat King Cole, whose career as an outstanding instrumentalist and vocalist bears some nice parallels to Benson’s.

THURSDAY — SEPT. 24

Three-day burlesque festival promises scintillating entertainment

Enjoy glitter and glamour mixed in with a touch of the tawdry and naughty at the fifth annual Hawaii Burlesque Festival & Revue, being held over several days at the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Doris Duke Theatre.

“It’s definitely grown exponentially since our first year,” said the Cherry Blossom Cabaret’s Violetta Beretta, the producer and director of the show. “We went from one small show to an entire week, and this year we’ll have three big shows.”

The festival will present shows over three nights starting Thursday, each featuring different dramatic themes and different casts, Beretta said. The first night will features classic burlesque themes, such as dances with feathers and balloons, but will feature an historical twist — the addition of a “vice squad” that appears to arrest the dancers, Beretta said. The audience is encouraged to dress up in vintage clothing for the evening.

The Sept. 23 show will be a “Hawaiian Whodunit” in which the audience will be invited to help solve “murders” that happen during the course of the evening. “People will be dropping left and right, and the games will be afoot,” Beretta said. The evening will feature Armitage Shanks, a well-known emcee of such events.

The Sept. 24 show will focus on pop culture and will turn the Doris Duke Theatre into “Tita’s Playhouse.” Local drag performer Tita T—sling will be “inviting people into the playhouse and showing off all the interesting characters in her neighborhood,” Beretta said. “That’s a very comedic and very sexy and fun night.”

​Beretta said the burlesque revival began about 10 years ago, an era she calls the “neo-burlesque era” that started with Trixie Little, who will perform on Sept. 24.

“Myself and my troupe are part of the second generation of neo-burlesque performers,” said Beretta.

— Steven Mark

SATURDAY

Sublime with Rome to play at Aloha Tower

Sublime with Rome is bringing its resurrected ska-punk-surf rock sound to the Aloha Tower Marketplace.

The band plays many of the hits by Sublime, which in the 1990s turned out two platinum albums (“40 oz. to Freedom” and “Sublime”) and one gold-seller (“Robbin’ the Hood”), but went into hiatus when lead singer and guitarist Bradley Nowell died of a heroin overdose in 1996.

The band regrouped in 2009 with Rome Ramirez as frontman and, after ironing out some legal wrinkles, began touring as Sublime with Rome.

The group, which includes Sublime co-founder Eric Wilson on bass and drummer Josh Freese, mixes in some newer tunes, many by Ramirez. They’ve release two albums: 2011’s “‘Yours Truly,” which included the hit tune “Panic” and reached No. 3 on the Billboard’s U.S. Rock charts, and last year’s “Sirens,” which also charted at No. 3.

Eli-Mac and ManaLion will open.