Quintaine Americana’s third full-length CD is a monster: Dark Thirty (Curve of the Earth) presents the band as whiskey-soaked, furious, and focused. Quintaine evolved in the mid ’90s when Mississippi-bred frontman Rob Dixon and drummer Jason King joined forces with local bass player Marc Schleicher, and they’ve been one of the more original, intelligent forces on Boston’s hard-rock scene. Fusing elements from arty Brit-rock to thrashy metal, Needles (1996) and Decade of the Brain (1998) made them a prime local draw. Like those first two releases, Dark Thirty, which they celebrated last Friday with a show downstairs at the Middle East, explodes the formulaic limitations of ’90s aggro with marauding grooves, complex songwriting, hard-hitting lyrics, and a touch of Mississippi backwoods nastiness, and it finds the band distilling their brand of muscle and might even farther with the help of producers Mudrock and Andrew Schneider.
Years of touring and the addition of second-guitarist Pete Valle have also kicked the band’s live impact up a couple of notches. At the Middle East, where Cash Monies and the Jetsetter (playing from a second stage alongside the upper-level bar) and Scissorfight opened, Quintaine treated the crowd to a driving cover of former tourmate Karma to Burn’s " Tequila " before shifting into the Doorsy acid blues of " Next to Go. " The set peaked with the back-to-back knockouts of " Bad Enough " and " Then One More, " the latter one of the band’s hook-heavier numbers.
Silhouetted in smoke and blasting stage lights, Quintaine’s front line-up looked like a classic ’70s act at the Fillmore — no hacky posturing or guitar wanking, no sophomoric bluster. Schleicher tore up his bass, and Valle’s brawny guitar enhanced the band’s sonic depth and visual balance. Center stage, Dixon recalled Kurt Cobain’s ravaged, melodic roar and Jim Morrison’s slyly demonic charisma, but he has a rebel yell that’s all his own.