Lions

"I'm pretty fucking delusional," Lions frontman Matt Drenik told ATX Magazine in May. Maybe he should've said ballsy. Drenik built a badass metal band in a month, climbed to the top of the Austin, Texas, music scene and booked a release party — all before setting foot in the studio to record his band's first album, in three sultry weeks above a dirty bar. The result is explosive, raving and in psychedelic color. Tinged with Metallica-influenced rhythms and ferocious melodies that bring Megadeth and Black Sabbath to mind, the Lions' music is lyrically as cocky, vibrant and grungy as the band members. Playing with the triumphant air of an act that knows its own wild velocity, this sweaty foursome is not so much delusional as thrillingly insane.