Tri-City metal band The Drip plans show Saturday in Kennewick

Heavy metal music is loud, no doubt about it.

But it’s not just noise — far from it, Bobby Mansfield said.

The 33-year-old Richland man plays guitar in The Drip, a Tri-City-based metal band singed to Relapse Records.

When it comes to metal music “there’s definitely a stigma, but you have to look beyond that to the speed, the technicality of it,” Mansfield said. “(The Drip) has evolved over the years to have really palatable song structures.”

Those song structures, along with the band’s musicianship and showmanship, have earned it a sizable following in the Northwest and beyond.

The Drip is playing an all-ages show Saturday in Kennewick. The bill also includes Narrow Minded, The Festering, Eyehategottfried and Seizure.

Music starts at 8 p.m. at Eagles Lodge 2485, 115 N. Fruitland St. Cost is $10.

Along with Mansfield, The Drip includes Brandon Caldwell on vocals, Shane Brown on drums, Talon Yager on bass and Blake Wolf on guitar.

The guys all hail from the Tri-Cities. The band formed about 10 years, starting out as a side project while the bandmates also worked on other musical projects.

Over time, The Drip took center stage. The band recently released its first full-length album, called The Haunting Fear of Inevitability.

It’s “chock-full of slaughterhouse riffage, lightning fast blastbeats and pulverizing breakdowns,” Relapse Records said.

The guys play a kind of metal called deathgrind, a fusion of death metal and grindcore. It’s loud, frenzied, intense.

The band is looking forward to the hometown show. Since Ray’s Golden Lion closed its doors a couple years ago, local metal shows have been fewer and farther between, Mansfield said.

He’s glad to see Eagles Lodge 2485 open its doors to metal bands, he said.

“It’s going to be a night filled with fun, and hopefully a great beginning for a new venue (for metal music),” he said.

The Drip’s show will be “loud, fun and energetic,” Mansfield said. “We do the full-on head-banging. We put on a performance.”

For more on The Drip, go to label.relapse.com/artist/the-drip or find the band on Facebook under facebook.com/thedripgrind.

This story was originally published June 22, 2017 at 5:15 PM with the headline "Tri-City metal band The Drip plans show Saturday in Kennewick."