Of the nearly 400 acts that played in Austin on the first night of SXSW 2008, Graveyard, from Gothenberg, Sweden, were probably the only band that would also have fit the bill at Britain’s great summer mud bath, the Glastonbury festival — in 1970. Graveyard’s set was just like their new debut album, Graveyard (Tee Pee): unison-fuzz riffs with sharp, rhythmic turnarounds — like a prog-rock Free or a nimbler Black Sabbath — and a singer, guitarist Joakim Nillson, whose growl recalls the gritty baritone of Savoy Brown’s Chris Youlden. If Graveyard had made an early-Seventies private-pressing LP that didn’t sell squat, they would be record-collector legends. Instead, they blew a few dozen minds at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday — thankfully without the mud.

[Photo: Anders Bergstedt]