Upon first being confronted with Crypts, the most immediate impression is a blast of non-directional aggression. Crypts is a band that seems intent on creating a vibe of barely contained chaos and vicious noise. Crypts wants the audience to be conflicted, to be challenged.

If you make it past those first intense minutes, however, Crypts has a way of revealing surprisingly beautiful compositions - bathed, as it always is, in scuzzy shock and awe.

"Originally, I was working on a hip-hop-oriented project, and then I met Nick Bartoletti, who would go on to do our visuals," says Crypts band member Bryce Brown. "We started writing music together for a little while, and were probably playing for about six months. But the styles we were doing weren't really meshing with a lot of people. They were pretty confused by the whole things."

"I had been friends with Steve Snere for a little while. We'd bullshit about what we were doing, and then we ended up playing together, once, and it went well, so we worked on it, and it eventually turned into Crypts," Bartoletti continues. "I grew up in Cleveland, and a lot of the stuff I listened to were bands like Unwound, and this kind of noisier, underground rock stuff. ... It wasn't really a conscious decision for Crypt to be really dark, it's just kind of what we ended up doing."

No doubt the inclusion of Snere - who had honed his noisier side as the frontman for post-hardcore group These Arms Are Snakes - had an effect on the direction Crypts would head in, from the group's hip-hop beginnings to what has now evolved into a melding of industrial, goth, noise rock and some background elements of hyphy electronica. As is usually the case these days, music snobs have banded together and decided on a term to describe such a band - witch house, of course - but Crypts does well at rising above such designations. The band's music, as overblown and in-your-face as it is, reaches moments of grandiose scope that defy categorization.

Though Crypts have only existed for roughly a year, the band has attracted a certain amount of attention, both positive and rabidly negative. Crypts' detractors had all the ammo in the world when the band was recently asked to perform a cover of "Endless, Nameless" at a 20th Anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind tribute concert at EMP - a, shall we say, rambunctious performance that culminated in Crypts being removed from the building. According to The Strangers' Line Out blog, Snere was escorted by security.

"As far as all the negative stuff goes, it's pretty funny to us," says Brown. "I mean, the shit that we get, we just kind of laugh about. ... Doing that Nirvana thing, to me, was hilarious. I've been a huge Nirvana fan for a really long time, and when we did that show, it was the antithesis of Nirvana - the people that were there. We went in with this idea that we were doing this really noisy song, and we were going to convey what it was really about. ... We wanted to make a racket."

The members of Crypts will continue to make their own kind of racket on the band's forthcoming debut LP, which they just finished recording.

The haters, as they say, will hate - but their hate only adds to Crypts' colossal racket.

Crypts

with DBC, Bronze, DJ Delicious Brown, DJ Ninja Monique
Friday, March 2, 9 p.m., $5
The New Frontier Lounge, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma
253.572.4020