I headed down to Baltimore last weekend for yet another concert. The town treated me as well as it always does, even though I had never been in the part of town where the venue, the Metro Gallery, was located, lurking in the shadows of nearby University of Baltimore buildings. Right by the venue is a billboard currently displaying a Lizzo advertisement. Walking past it on the way to the club, I turned around to catch the heavy street graffiti on the back of the clandestine graphic. Once inside, the Gallery revealed itself to be a very efficient space with an intimate atmosphere and a modern sensibility. It’s clean, but not too clean, which kept it from becoming stuck up. It holds art shows as well as concerts, but the creativity of the bands I got to see blurred the line between the two.

First on stage was New York based collective CG8. I had never heard any of their cacophony before, but I was already familiar with their image: three leggy chicks in daring, D.I.Y. outfits tearing things up, rolling around in wires, and being as carefree as possible. I obviously expected some degree of a good time from them, but what I got ended up soaring beyond any of my expectations, not unlike Barbarella’s space ship. The speakers emitted sounds that were inexplicably alien, tensed-up, and fervorous. I had previously seen their drummer, Chase, at Man On Man’s Riot Fest performance, where her assault on her drum kit was a highlight of the festival weekend. She didn’t let up in Baltimore, either; she pounded away with heart shaking power and precision that has to be felt to be believed, making every song irresistibly infectious in the process. Bassist Lida’s lyrics, which I later read on the inner sleeve of the vinyl record they had for sale at the merch booth, are intelligent and poignant without sacrificing a strong and whacked-out sense of humor. They know that a smile is still essential for survival in today’s world. Their playfulness couldn’t have been better exemplified by their handmade getups: strategically cut neon leotards, boots made for walkin’, and straight-outta-Microsoft-Paint-pattern tights. It was as if the Powerpuff Girls got lost in the Forbidden Zone and emerged fifteen years later to teach the world what they had learned. They simply would not be the band they are without the emphasis on style—when they’re not touring, they keep a weirdo-techno-whack-out-chic fashion line that got featured in Vogue. But in all their visual tomfoolery they never once sacrificed their brains or their guts.

The set ended with the girls giving up their guitars and playing around with synthesizers, one of which looked like an orange cartoon cat. (I saw the same exact one while walking past the toy section at Target the next day.) Guitar player Veronika sang a little diddy about wanting to be things such as Paris Hilton and a calculator. And then, it was over. It was genuinely sad to see them have to step off stage; I could’ve taken an entire night of them I was so fascinated.

Luckily, the next set from Texas based hard rockers Pussy Gillette brought a similar spirit of raw and brazen intensity. From her appearance alone, frontwoman Masani Negloria, whose first name is a reference to the gap between her two front teeth, is potentially the most badass person in existence. She radiated supreme cool with an italicized capital C-O-O-L in her leather ensemble and awesome throwback afro. In a perfect world there would be a cult film where she and the CGs have an epic B-movie cacophony catfight battle of the bands, but alas, this is no perfect world. When she took the stage, she only doubly proved her C-O-O-L: her voice is a strikingly unique snarl that perfectly suited her in-between song banter, and she plucked the strings of her bass so fast her hand was constantly a blur. Each song in itself was an infectious blast of garage rock realness, with lyrics touching on everything from the cruelty of police brutality to a smorgasbord of bananas, hammers, and lettuce wraps. The Gillette set was a sonic burst of pure energy perfectly capable of obliterating the front door of your parents who are worrying where they went wrong when you started listening to bands that alienate the neighbors so with their awful racket. Yet I would bet that the band members wouldn’t be against sitting down with those frightened adults for a quick lunch and try to have a constructive conversation, bridging the cultural divide. It’s all about unity for them—unity under good music and good, not-so-clean fun. And extremely fresh H2O to swig between songs. Don’t we all deserve something fresh?

I had pretty much decided after Pussy Gillette wrapped up that there was no way that the rest of the night was going to match the two sets I had just witnessed. The rest of the crowd, however, had only just begun. Having stood right next to the dance pit the show of theirs I saw in D.C. last year, I knew that headliner Surfbort’s fans are quite the intense bunch. That spirit had seemingly only intensified in the three or so months since then. The moment Dani Miller stepped on stage, I physically felt a distinct shove as people started to crowd around, signaling that things were about to get wild. They did. I found myself getting jostled around by the overexcited crowd, caught in the outskirts of their mosh pit ritual to their rainbow-mulleted goddess. At one point I ended up against the stage right in front of the leftmost guitar player’s pedals—a very good spot—entirely due to getting practically shoved into it. I stayed there for a bit warring with my digital camera’s dying battery—pics or it didn’t happen—until I started getting jostled around over and over again. At that point I just stopped trying to keep up with the dancers and slipped away to a safer region of the crowd off to the side.

By that time in the night, I was less concerned with partying it up than I was with digesting the two acts that had just blown my mind. Despite seemingly existing on two opposite sides of a spectrum—the extravagant and the stripped down—both groups had important things to say, and they said them by inviting all spectators into the weird little curated tune worlds of their creation. Furthermore, these multimedia approaches aren’t restricted to their live shows. When you take a look at anything CG8, you’re falling head first into a psychedelic, digitally warped dimension to swim around in amongst the glitchy artifacts and cute girls. And when you watch a Pussy Gillette music video—they’re all filmed on old school VHS tape—you feel as if you’re watching a clip that has circulated for decades in the coolest sects of the revolution rock underground to much militant punk approval. And seeing these groups do their thing makes you feel as if the “classics,” all those bands that everyone loves decades later despite no one caring in their heyday, are here for you in full force.

And, suddenly, it’s as if there are groups that go against the grain of flash-in-the-pan trendiness to form their own multidimensional brands driven by progress, not stagnation or regression. It’s as if there are still true artists out there, brandishing their sonic weaponry as a guiding beacon for the outcasts, the delegated dregs, the perpetual aliens who are urging for something truly new. And as someone who happens to be one of those perpetual aliens, fed up with monotony and the systematic dumbing down of the mainstream, last Saturday’s event was one of the most satisfying things I’ve witnessed live in a while.