When a band names itself after the guy who allegedly killed President Kennedy…you start to wonder. Aware of their name and their genre – metal/punk/rock – I prepared myself for a serving of piping hot rage with a side of worthless masculinity.

As the Midwest trio lethargically came on stage, setting up so casually it felt like I was watching them prep for your everyday-garage-jam-session, I picked up my rum and coke and apathetically strolled over to the floor. What the hell was I in for?

The lead guitarist, a disheveled beatnik, struck an electric chord, holding it, dragging it, making it whine and throb. I began to get tingly – like when you know your about to descend down a steep roller coaster slope.

Then the second brunette grunger, the rhythm guitarist, began striking and plucking a melody so sweet, so melodic my heart began to skip along. I was sucked into the harmonic antithesis – hard, raucous dissonance alongside honeyed, electric arias. Smooth and delicious but jagged, jarring and cacophonous.

Suddenly the drummer started rippling into the mix. Soft at first, then harder and harder till he was literally pounding the set. The lead guitarist began screeching along to the beat, barking commands and orders I couldn’t understand. It was at that minute of the show when rock turned to metal; it was at that second when I hurriedly downed my cocktail. I was going to need it.

By the time the first song had ended, the Casbah crowd began to loosen. Knees began bounce to the offbeats, heads bobbing in all directions, and the bar seemed to swarm with folks preparing for a complete loss of inhibition. By the third song – the crowd was officially moshing.

A Sirhan Sirhan show reminds me of an Alice in Wonderland trance-world. At times I was transported to an Eddie Van Halen solo performance – where the strong, tannic electrics would howl, wail, whimper, and snivel. Eerie, scary, and hypnotizing.

At other times, I was watching the Dead Kennedy’s. Clobbering vocals pulverized my eardrum, and I felt pummeled by the extreme force coming out the singer’s lungs. He screamed fast, broken lyrics apace with the constant, solid drumbeat, walloping the crowd with a dose of fresh anger.

Then came the melodic harmonies, a close relative of Led Zep’s Dyer Maker, soothing my soul. The crowd was constantly brought to new peaks, new lows, back the middle and then completely tormented in all directions at once.

It was amazing. It was exhilarating. By the end of the show I wanted to jump out my skin. Forget the alcohol – I wanted a Red Bull. No...five Red Bulls. I felt so alive I could have either concocted mind-blowing poetry and beat someone’s ass.

Sirhan Sirhan is a group of musicians who recreate and embody classical symphonies in the form of metal/punk. Go see them live if you want a total body experience – or a really fun Friday night.