Have a sludged-out Valentine's Day

Those seeking Valentine's Day plans should look no further than Kelley Square's Hotel Vernon, which will be playing host to the sludgiest celebration of the year. Worcester's Set is taking the headlining duties of the evening and will be joined by Philly's Sunburster and Ten Ton Hammer and Central Mass bands Leather Lung and Birnam Wood.

The Vernon is the perfect place to spend a Valentine's evening, regardless of what is going on in the ship room, but bringing together some stoned-out tunes, free peanuts and $1 drafts can never be a bad idea and with Vernon veterans, With Set on board, it is impossible to believe anyone could have a bad time.

Set got its start around the tail end of 2010. The members of the band have a long history together, playing in countless bands with one another. As each of the members found themselves with the time and initiative to get something new going, they jumped at the chance to start fresh.

“We're best friends,” Set drummer Tim Hetu said. "We've all been roommates in the past. If we weren't playing in bands, we wouldn't be very far apart anyways.”

Hetu said the members grew up enjoying classic bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep and more modern bands, such as Sleep and Annihilation Time. They released their debut LP, “Valley of the Stone,” back in 2014 and the album itself was recorded in an, at least these days, unconventional manner, completely analog at Mystic Valley Studios with Alex Garcia-Rivera.

Hetu plays in a number of bands throughout Worcester and doesn't pigeon hole himself into one genre; instead he plays the music he wants to with the people he wants to across the board. In addition to Set and playing with numerous punk and hardcore bands throughout the years, Hetu plays with the grind-core band Eaten with fellow Set member Andy Fathead, as well as the jazz group The Worcester Jazz Collective. While jazz and metal/hardcore/punk may not sound like a perfect fit, that do-it-yourself ethos survives across genres.

“We try to involve the whole jazz community in that we try to give life to an active improvisation scene in Worcester,” said Hetu. “It's DIY and it's for the love of music, so it's very similar to the punk and metal scenes in a lot of ways. It's good energy, it's spreading good vibes among a community that wants to contribute and feed off it and have a good time and make the city and community a better place to live in.”

According to Hetu, that jazz experience is a perfect mesh with what the members have going on with Set.

“To me it's all just music, jazz for example is one of the most musical forms of music,” explained Hetu. “You have to have rhythm, melody, song form. You have to listen as well as keeping the groove and playing with people and interact with the improvisation aspect. Those attributes shouldn't just be for jazz, they should be applied to all music. I feel like as far as playing different styles, it's all the same thing. It's using the same musicality and applying it to different vocabularies of music that you love.”

Set will be recording a new album in the near future with the band's new singer, Dave Shay, at New Alliance in Cambridge. There are plans for an East Coast tour in the spring.

For now, make sure to catch Set, Sunburster, Ten Ton Hammer, Leather Lung and Birnam Wood at the Hotel Vernon on Valentine's Day, Feb. 14.

“This is the best time of year for slow, dark music,” said Hetu. “We just got buried under 70 inches of snow or whatever it is. It's cold music.”