Muncie based The Cocaine Wolves will headline a night of punk rock attitude and guitar driven rock at The Ruin on Friday, March 22. If you read about them on their Facebook account it becomes immediately clear that The Cocaine Wolves are not Nickelback fans, so if that is your idea of great music, this show is not for you. However, if you like your music a bit edgier, The Cocaine Wolves might be what you are looking to hear.

The band’s first album, Royal Feast, is an amalgam of everything they loved about hard rock and metal while growing up in a town full of characters that provided inspiration for the nine-track opus. Influenced by classic rock bands like Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Van Halen, and Judas Priest, The Cocaine Wolves are fighting the good fight in bringing rock back to the forefront of the area’s music scene. Jeff Napier of the now defunct Indianapolis newspaper NUVO said the band was “the greasiest thing to come out of Muncie in forever, playing grooving hard rock with a heavy debt to ‘Defenders of the Faith’-era Judas Priest” and “’Bad Reputation’-era Thin Lizzy.” David Lindquist of the Indy Star described Royal Feast as “fierce, thundering, irreverent, explicit, and brash, guaranteed to start, revive or perpetuate any party.”

And what a party it will be as Indianapolis-based punk rockers Stealing Volume and Fort Wayne music scene fixtures Riverbottom Nitemare Band open the show. Call it a party night or Super Rock Friday, either way, it’ll be a great night to check out three extraordinary emerging bands. — Chris Hupe