If you're headed to M.I.A. at the Palladium tonight, get there early: Cool Kids have cancelled, but we're dying to see what C440R's monster party-rap duo have in store when they step in tonight as a last-minute opening act. Big Digits at the Palladium: who'da thunk it? For an idea of how much awesomeness is in store, check the video above to see what happened the last time someone offered TD and Mac Swell a nice big stage.

Lizzy Borden

Metal Blade 25th Anniversary Jam

Unearth

Cannibal Corpse (with Trevor from Black Dahlia Murder)

The Red Chord

Job for a Cowboy

Goatwhore

Shai Hulud

Demiricous

The Network

Hallows Eve

Beyond the Embrace

The Architect (Note to singers playing NEMHF: if your drummer throws a stool into the audience, the audience very well may throw it back and hit your singer in the head, thereby forcing him to complete the set in a bloody mess and then repair to the hospital afterwards for stiches. -- C.M.)

New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, Day Two
April 28, 2007
The Palladium, Worcester
Photos: Carina Mastrocola

Bad Ash

The Red Chord

Mongrel

Municipal Waste

The Acacia Strain

Gwar

Rock N Shock Day 2
With Gwar, the Red Chord, about a dozen other bands, and a shitload of horror movie geeks
October 14 At the Palladium and the DCU Center, Worcester
Photos courtesy Return to the Pit. See more here.

All photos (c) Aaron & Returntothepit.com. More here.

OTD caught a ride out to Worcester last night with our old friends Chris Jackson, his lovely wife Kristen Day, and Jimmy Driscoll, two of whom got shout-outs from the stage from their old pals the Bronx. The Bronx dudes, heirs to the Los Angeles punk throne, smashed through a focused 30-minute set that mostly flew right over the heads of metal nation, then were nice enough to share beer, merch, and perch space with us in the Palladium penthouse, which means we missed most of Converge -- from what little we saw they were, uh, typically Convergey, i.

Bury Your Dead are our favorite Boston-via-N'hampshire hardcore band ever. Last time we heard from them, dudes on message boards were implicating BYD in Sharon Osbourne's infamous plot to egg the dudes in Iron Maiden. The band vehemently denied it to MTVNews, but c'mon: for a hardcore band, laying some yolk on Bruce Dickinson's chin has got to be the highlight of your professional existence.

From top: DragonForce, metalheads, Gamma Ray, Into Eternity, Light This City, Bronx Casket Co., Wolf, Wolf. All photos (c) Carina Mastrocola.

(OTD is stuck at a podcasting conference this weekend (you can watch it live on the internerd), but ace photographer Carina Mastrocola is at the world-class New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, where last night goateed dudes played thrash covers of "Beat It," Italian girls killed it, and a few dudes who weren't on the schedule stopped by.

Yes, the Haunted have played the Worcester Palladium. But who knew the Palladium was haunted?

Full details coming tonight at 9 pm on the Sci-Fi Channel's Ghost Hunters, but we had to get skinny from our girl Sylvia at MassConcerts, who was giving ghost tours to rock stars just last weekend. "On Saturday, I helped out Lacuna Coil because they needed space to do a photo shoot," she says.