One band is a Skellerpalooza quasi-virgin. Mother Nature refused to let the second perform in September. The third band has been around the Skellerpalooza block a few times.

Wine of Nails, Carnyce and HuntingDTon will bring their varying levels of Skellerpalooza experience and diverse music together at 10 p.m. at the All American Rathskeller, 108 S. Pugh St.

"We're definitely going to put on another amazing show, we love playing there," HuntingDTon drummer Justin Niedzwecki said.

The pop punk quartet of Pittsburgh transplants has a growing fan base in State College that the band tries to keep satisfied by playing Skellerpalooza once a month.

One of HuntingDTon's motivations for playing -- and the reason for the spelling of the band's name -- is the memory of Dave and Tim, friends who died in an automobile accident in 1998.

"They were our roadies, our number one fans ... They'd run the lights and carry our stuff. They were always by our side," Niedzwecki said. "We're still carrying their souls with us."

Preceding the high-energy midnight set of HuntingDTon is Harrisburg-based Carnyce, a band whose name comes from a different, yet still intense place.

"It was an act of desperation when our third band name got foiled by another band that got signed before we did," guitarist/vocalist Jamison Rotz said. "We started picking weird stuff we knew no one else would think of."

The band settled on a conglomeration of a handful of words, and a couple months ago Carnyce was foiled again -- this time by Hurricane Isabel. The bad weather prevented the band from traveling to State College for Skellerpalooza, so tonight is its first appearance in the original music showcase this semester.

Carnyce is working on a second album right now, and the punk influenced alt-rock trio plans on playing a lot of its new material.

"We've kicked everything up a notch, and made it faster paced," Rotz said.

At 10 p.m. Wine of Nails makes its Skellerpalooza debut, but bassist Dom Peruso is no stranger to the showcase. Peruso is also in The Flaming Johnsons and The Grimm, both of which have played Skellerpalooza recently.

"It gives a venue to bands that have a difficult time playing in the area," Peruso said. "The best thing about this is it enables musicians that will play in more commercial projects to stretch out a bit and not play 'Brown Eyed Girl' three times a night."

Wine of Nails' style is something the band likes to call fantasy rock, a mostly-instrumental mixture of blues, reggae, funk, heavy metal, progressive rock, electronic, jazz and other types of music, Peruso said.

"It's Frank Zappa meets Metallica on the way to jamming with Miles Davis ... Something bizarre," he said. "It's a grab-you-by-the-throat kind of music."