Bust out your balalaikas along with your earplugs. Seattle-based gypsy-metal juggernaut Kultur Shock celebrates its fifteenth anniversary at Chop Suey tonight ($15 DOS admission/Doors open at 9pm). And you’d be nuts to pass up the chance to view a band that routinely works arena-sized crowds into a lather all over Europe, playing in the sweaty confines of a tiny Capitol Hill club.

If you’re lazy, comparisons to avowed Kultur Shock fans System of a Down and New York ethno-punk caravan Gogol Bordello might seem apropos. Like SOAD, Kultur Shock throw a fistful of metal crunch into their stew of East European rhythmic and melodic cadences (KS’s newest Jack Endino-produced long-player Ministry of Kultur is a steel-toed gypsy boot of a record); and the jet-fueled swirl of sound definitely shares a spiritual kinship with the Gogols’ manic multi-culti attack.

But Kultur tops Val Kiossovski’s raging guitars with Paris Hurley’s gypsy violins and Amy Denio’s schizoid sax fills, both of which root the roar in tradition. Dreadlocked Kultur Shock lead singer Gino Srjan Yevdjevich looms way larger than Gogol Bordello’s wiry charmer Eugene Hutz, too. Yevdjevich’s voice oscillates between gravelly Balkan growls and alien ululations that suggest a lust-filled Slavic zealot, and the music galloping relentlessly around him could fill a mosh pit as readily as a dance hall. The floor of Chop Suey will serve as both tonight; we’ll lay you rubles to donuts.  Do not miss.