The OFF! show scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 9, has been canceled due to illness. The venue recommends holding on to tickets and hopes to announce a make-up show in the near future. Headliners Negative Approach and Bad Antics will be playing $5  show with opener Guantanamo Dogpile at the venue instead.

Formed three years ago around original Black Flag/Circle Jerks singer and SoCal punk icon Keith Morris, OFF! delivers a bracing style of feral, 90-second hardcore songs that hearkens back to Morris' classic work. OFF! came together after the Circle Jerks went on hiatus in the midst of recording what was to be the band's first new studio effort since 1995. After friction between Morris, album producer Dimitri Coats (of the band Burning Brides) and the rest of the group brought work to a grinding halt, Morris and Coats decided to develop the songs they had written together in a new project.

Recruiting an all-star rhythm section in Redd Kross bassist Steven McDonald and drummer Mario Rubalcaba (of Rocket from the Crypt, Hot Snakes and Earthless fame), the group had an immediate chemistry that is clearly audible on the caustic blasts heard on the quartet's debut recording for Vice Records. The release, The First Four EPs compiled the four of 7" singles in a box set and on CD, races through 16 pummeling songs in less than 18 minutes. The recordings have been widely hailed as some of the most vital music of Morris' long career.

Live, the band tears through the new material with a ferocity few musicians half the age of the 55-year-old Morris could muster. OFF! returns to the Bay Area to promote its eponymous album from last year with this show at the Great American Music Hall. Joining the band will be pioneering Midwestern hardcore band Negative Approach. Founded in 1981 by singer John Bannon, the group stood out as not only the first hardcore band to emerge from Detroit, but (along with Necros and Lansing, Michigan, contemporaries The Meatmen) one of the first young bands to embrace the style in the entire region.  

While the classic line-up featuring Bannon, guitarist Rob McCulloch, bassist Graham McCulloch and drummer Chris "Opie" Moore only lasted long enough to issue a single and one album -- Tied Down in 1983 for Touch & Go -- Bannon's commanding bellow and the group's intense stage performances made the band as influential to the punk scene as their Detroit forebears The MC5 and The Stooges. Bannon went on to lead the punk-blues Laughing Hyenas and Easy Action, but in 2006 embarked on the first of several reunions with original drummer Moore. Bannon used Easy Action members Harold Richardson (guitar) and Ron Sakowski (bass) despite the McCulloch brothers reported interest in participating, but reviews of the band's live performances at festivals and tours since then have been glowing. SoCal punks Bad Antics open the show.

OFF! with Negative Approach
Saturday, Feb. 9, 8:30 p.m. $16
Great American Music Hall