NOISE

Are you any more anxious than usual about playing your first arena show in your hometown?

What does an arena afford Panic! that a club or theater doesn't?

It's our first time really doing the kind of size production that we've been wanting to do for a long time. The way that we present our show to people is less in the fashion of a club show, where it's intimate. It's more in the fashion of a Broadway musical where people pay money to see a spectacle and we try to give it to them with our production and the performers that we have. It's more like if you were going to see Cirque du Soleil or the Blue Man Group—you go to see a performance, not just a show.

The industry is paying more attention to Las Vegas in the wake of your and The Killers' success. Do you think that's deserved, or did the city just happen to produce two popular bands at around the same time?

In my opinion, it seems like there just happened to be a couple of bands that came out of Vegas and have had somewhat successful careers so far. I feel like the Vegas scene isn't very strong, if at all existent. Growing up, I never went to a lot of shows because venues were constantly opening and closing all the time, every two or three months. So it's hard for a band to survive unless you're putting your stuff on the Internet. It seems like the music scene isn't strong enough where we can keep venues around. Either you play your friend's backyard or you play a sold-out show at House of Blues to 2,000 people. There's no middle ground for bands.

Where there's some grudging respect for The Killers on the local scene, veteran Vegas bands don't seem to like Panic! much. How does that make you feel?

Honestly, when I hear that kind of thing, I don't get mad. I kind of feel that if I was in their position I would probably say the same things that they say about our band. If I was in their position, I would be upset. If I was in a band that had been playing live shows in Vegas for five years and built up all this credibility, I would probably say the same things right off the bat, without even listening to our band. But that just springs off of jealousy, I think, and ignorance. So I don't think about it too hard, just kind of write it off. It doesn't really bother me too much.

How is your new bassist working out, and do you have any regrets about firing Brent Wilson from the band?

It's going great. We love [Jon Walker]. He's one of our best friends, and we're much happier now than we were with our last bass player. It just turned out that the direction we're heading in is getting more serious. This is a job; it can't be taken lightly, and we found the right person for the job. The decision was completely musical—we needed somebody who was capable of playing different instruments and was willing to progress and improve on their talents. And our last bass player wasn't willing to do that. So it's definitely a much better situation now.

What was more memorable about your MTV Video Music Awards experience—winning Video of the Year or having your acceptance crashed by some guy you'd never seen before?

It was all kind of a weird situation. First, out of all of the awards, that was the award we thought least possible to win. We didn't even consider it. After the other four that we'd been nominated for had passed, we were like, "Okay, that's it. It was a good night and that's fine. The other guys deserved it." And then they called our name and it was the biggest shock. And the even bigger shock was going up there to receive the award, and Six or whatever his name was started doing his little rant. But he wasn't being negative at all. He just wanted to get his little plug, his 15 minutes of fame.

Have you watched the YouTube footage of you getting knocked out by the bottle at the Reading Festival?

Yeah, like a week after it happened it was on YouTube and the rest of the guys showed me. And it was pretty funny. I mean, it's messed up, but watching it I was like, "Wow, I got pelted." It was crazy ... 30 seconds into the song, I'm hit with a half-full soda bottle right in my temple, and it pretty much just knocked me out. I guess I was unconscious for a couple minutes. I came to and the band was off to the side of the stage and I asked them, "Why aren't we going back on to continue?" And they asked me if I was okay, and I was fine. So it just made sense to keep playing. Why should we not play for the 25,000 people that came to see us just to satisfy the 10 people who were throwing the bottles that hate our band? So it was definitely a memorable show, and probably one of the best performances we've had.

"Unleash the bats!" My Chemical Romance used to command. These days the band is more concerned with global domination than vampiric activity, but there is still plenty of night music out there.

1. My Chemical Romance: "Vampires Will Never Hurt You"

(I Brought You My Bullets You Brought Me Your Love, 2002)

Even back then, My Chem weren't so much shrieking in terror as

channeling post-adolescent angst.

2. Bauhaus: "Bela Lugosi's Dead" (1979 single) Perhaps the

most influential goth-rock song ever, this 9-minute opus paved

the way for the garlic-averse youngsters on this list.

3. Concrete Blonde: "Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)"

(Bloodletting, 1990) The tolling bells and chanted choruses:

Concrete Blonde turns being undead into a fight song.

4. Say Hi to Your Mom: "Angels and Darlas" (Impeccable Blahs,

2006) Goes so far as to take on beloved characters from Buffy

the Vampire Slayer.

5. Neil Young: "Vampire Blues" (On the Beach, 1974) Only he

could utilize a blood-sucking metaphor to condemn oil barons—

just as relevant as it was 30 years ago.

6. Sting: "Moon Over Bourbon Street" (The Dream of the Blue

Turtles, 1985) Oh, you'll never see Sting's shade or hear the

sound of his feet ...

7. Slayer: "At Dawn They Sleep" (Hell Awaits, 1985) Who knew

that creatures of the night could be so into headbanging?

8. My Chemical Romance: "The Sharpest Lives" (The Black

Parade, 2006) "In love with all these vampires," singer Gerard

Way admits. "So you can leave like the sane abandoned me." A

vial of holy water says his adoring legions won't forsake him

anytime soon.

This debut from the former Nashville Star contestant is grittier and more original than you'd expect. Down-home country tunes like "I Can't Be Bothered" and the title track have bite and authenticity, and while the second half is bogged down by a couple of treacly ballads, Lambert (who wrote or co-wrote almost every song) has a bright future beyond her basic-cable origins.

Brutal, fast and loud, Virus could be the sonic representation of a metalhead's wet dream. But the Swedish death-metal band's 17-song array of growling vocals, distorted guitars and machine-gun drums makes us wonder what would have happened if the double-bass drum pedal had never been invented.