Chicago is one of America's great cities, but in terms of its various interlocking music scenes, it operates more like a small town. The different genres can all exist and thrive independently, on their own, but there always seems to be some level of crossover -- people with friends in the different scenes, people who are willing to work with each other in the right circumstances. Many of the city's creative types seem to live in the same neighborhoods and attend the same drunken street fairs. That doesn't mean that you'll find Lil Durk hanging out at Wilco's loft, but it does mean that the city can, from time to time, cough up some surprising hybrid beasts. Consider, if you will, Yakuza, the great Chicago metal band whose frontman Bruce Lamont is a shamanic fire-eyed figure who sometimes makes terrifying bleating noises on a saxophone. Yakuza have worked with Chicago jazz musicians like Ken Vandermark and Hamid Drake, and they've done it without sounding any less heavy . And Lamont also leads Bloodiest, a band grounded in Chicago's metal scene but so loose and astrally-inclined that they don't really have a genre to call their own.