Orgy plays to small crowd at Murat

With the big bearded guy playing air guitar, the girl in the annoying pink sweater who danced like Charlie Brown, the flasher and the girl who couldn't have weighed more than 75 pounds and crowd surfed several times only to be thrown around like a rag doll, Monday night was full of moments at the Murat Egyptian Room in Indianapolis. Oh yeah, a few bands played, too, but quite frankly, they weren't as interesting.\nAlien Ant Farm took the stage after an unscheduled opener by Tinfed and played to a crowd of about 200 people. The set included its first single, "Movies," and a cover of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal." This proved two things. First, second-rate rock bands should never cover Michael Jackson. Second, Alien Ant Farm's guitarist has an annoyingly high-pitched voice.\nTo give the band credit, it didn't have much of a crowd to play to, and its music was mostly uninspired, but Alien Ant Farm sounded good and played as well as any opener could, given the conditions.\nSpineshank hit next. The Los Angeles-based band's set can be summed up by loud guitars and a screaming lead singer. While the crowd had grown slightly before Spineshank performed, it was still somewhat small. Sadly, it wouldn't get that much bigger by night's end.\nSpineshank's set included tracks from both its albums: Strictly Diesel and last year's The Height Of Callousness. The band exploded through 45 minutes of new wave metal, featuring tracks such as "New Disease," "Play God" and "Strictly Diesel."\nWhile the band obviously caters to the rage and aggression in everyone, as could be seen by the moderately large mosh pit that formed early on in the set, the band's music was hardly entertaining.\nOrgy finally came on well after 10 p.m. to a crowd that still didn't pack the house. In fact, the Egyptian Room wasn't even half-full. Granted that's tough for a band, especially a headliner, to play to, but after an hour, it was obvious why the crowd was so small.\nOrgy's act, while a feast for the eyes with a mildly impressive light show, lacked any semblance of energy, perhaps because each instrument was played so loudly that it canceled the others out. The most exciting moments were easily the short drum interludes.\nBobby Hewitt, the drummer, came onstage first and launched into a several-minute drum solo before the three Orgy guitarists showed up and promptly swallowed him whole. Lead singer Jay Gordon arrived last to little fanfare as the band plowed through "Suckerface."\nAll the members of Orgy, save the barely visible drummer, were clad in classic '80s glam rock garb (come to think of it, so were a good majority of the crowd). But the music hardly resembled '80s glam rock style. Instead, it combined seven-string guitars and anthemic beats to create loud, distorted, rage-filled tracks.\nTracks from both of Orgy's albums appeared during the night. "Stitches," "Opticon" and "Fiction (Dreams in Digital)" all got the crowd rowdy, but nowhere near the energy evoked during Spineshank's sets. There was no mosh pit and fewer crowd surfers. There was little crowd excitement until Gordon threw his towel into the audience, causing a fight between two teenage boys. Kudos to the two for finally deciding to tear the towel in half, hug and make up.