Amid body odor intensified by the moist New York City night and swirling booze breath, I sat mesmerized, paralyzed into reverence by the loud, heavy, emotional music. It was November 2004, a few days after stuffing myself with turkey and watching giant pretty balloons pass down Central Park West, I stood before 3 Inches of Blood at The Continental club. While the leathered throngs, with long hair flailing and shaved heads bobbing, jostled around me, I began to experience déjà vu.  Surrounded by so many fans earnestly in love with metal, I felt oddly vindicated for my former obsession with Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Slayer.

Metal, it seems, has metamorphosed into something funkier, more rhythmic and less embarrassingly glammy than its '80s incarnation. The later metal bands - Limp Bizkit, Coal Chamber and The Deftones - may look more like B-boys than hard rockers, but this new development doesn't change history. It was never cool to like metal. Fashionable, maybe. Trendy, yes. But universally cool? No.

3 Inches of Blood divorced themselves from the cheesier of their metal ancestors.  This Vancouver, B.C., sextet, sporting two singers - Cam Pipes belting out death metal screams while guitarist Justin Hagberg has replaced Jamie Hopper's vocal duties - spews classic metal swagger, and that's why I dig them. They remind me of the '70s metal past - the vocal assault of Rob Halford, epic guitars of Iron Maiden and Metallica. 

Loud and raucous, 3 Inches of Blood rocked New York City that November (with Brian Redman on bass). And they will rock Jazzbones Wednesday with screaming-for-vengeance vocals, medieval tales of pillaging unsuspecting victims and fair maidens, razor sharp guitar riffs and thunderous drumming. Witchburn and Deathbed Confessions will set the tone.

3 INCHES OF BLOOD, a 99.9 KISW Metal Shop production with Witchburn and Deathbed Confessions, 8 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 16, Jazzbones, 2803 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, $9.99-$15, 253.396.9169

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