Usana Amphitheatre's last show of the year is the 14th annual X96 Maverik Big Ass Show on Sept. 27, featuring the heat of nearly 20 hard rock bands playing within nine hours.

The Salt Lake Tribune interviewed several bands performing at this year's festival, with all of them sharing liberal views on using the word "ass" in conversations.

Local H » is a band with two members, Scott Lucas (vocals, guitar, bass) and Joe Daniels (drums). They were high school classmates in Zion, Ill., and after many attempts at recruiting a bassist, gave up, before Lucas added bass pickups to his electric guitar.

The band's latest album, "12 Months," is an intense month-by-month account of the year after a difficult breakup.

As for profanity, Lucas said, "Profanity really f------ bothers me."

Shiny Toy Guns » is a Los Angeles-based synth rock band with a new lead singer, Sisely Treasure, after the departure of Carah Faye Charnow. (The rest of the band is male.)

"Sisely brings an experienced artist" to the band, said bassist and keyboardist Jeremy Dawson. "If she was a shape, she would be an obtuse shape with many angles."

Treasure, recently a contestant on the reality TV show "The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll" before she joined the band, sang on most of the new album, "Season of Poison."

"We're a different slice of pie now," he said. "Cyanide [pie]."

Ludo » is a St. Louis power pop band that has seen its latest album, "You're Awful, I Love You," steadily creep up the charts, based on the single "Love Me Dead," which has reached No. 8 on Billboard's modern rock chart.

Because of the recent success, keyboardist Tim Convy said, the band has graduated from the vans the members lived in for the past five years into a tour bus - albeit a small one. The band had a bus for this summer's Warped Tour, and was one of the few Warped bands with a keyboard player. As for profanity, Convy said, "We have no problem with profanity."

Not many on this tour do.