Remember the moment when alt-rockers traded storytelling and tea for diatribes and Mountain Dew? In between bouts of slamming things on other things—fists on jury stands, Big Gulps on pawn-store counters—angry young men might point to 1997, the year the Deftones released the nonsensical hit single “My Own Summer (Shove It),” on which Chino Marino sings, “The shade is a tool, a device, a savior/See, I try and look up to the sky/But my eyes burn.” It was almost as if overnight, God himself had banned guitar solos and volume knobs. But nü-metal isn’t all bad. Over the course of a few records, Atlanta’s Sevendust has crafted beautiful vocals and comprehensible lyrics, courtesy of Lajon Witherspoon, a black frontman in rock music’s most racially mixed subgenre. The band had a long stretch of boring work after the departure of guitarist Clint Lowery in 2005, but now that he’s back, the odds are Sevendust will remember what made it an exceptional band in the first place, and will play accordingly.

SEVENDUST PERFORMS WITH DAY OF FIRE AND HAIL THE VILLAIN AT 8 P.M. AT JAXX NIGHTCLUB, 6355 ROLLING ROAD, SPRINGFIELD. $23-$25. (703) 569-5940.