Column of Heaven are one of the several projects that rose out of the ashes of The Endless Blockade (along with Farang and the now-defunct Slaughter Strike)– and holds the distinction of being the most distressing, in the best possible way. The Endless Blockade created truly deranged powerviolence; Column of Heaven builds upon a similarly noisy, chaotic […] More »
Last Sunday I swung by Fire on the Water – named for a time when old boats were lit ablaze and set out to sea for entertainment – a day of art installations, music and dancing at Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion in west-end Toronto. Built in 1922 as changing facilities for the local beach and swimming […] More »
Traditional heavy metal band Black Moor, who hail from Halifax, NS, play the kind of bold, bombastic, anthem-driven heavy metal that defined the genre in it’s heyday. Lethal Waters is their sophomore album, following the critically acclaimed The Conquering which was released in 2009. That first album was a bit of a bittersweet victory for […] More »
The theme for this weekend’s SappyFest may be “everybody knows this is nowhere,” but in reality, the music festival has put a giant “you are here” arrow on Sackville, New Brunswick. Started in 2006 by local music label Sappy Records (musician Julie Doiron, artist Jon Claytor and label chief Paul Henderson), the fest is one […] More »
My relationship with The Agonist has not always been positive or enthusiastic. The melodic death metalcore band from Ottawa, Ont., have released a total of three full-length albums over the course of their career, and their previous efforts always struck me as a bit bland and showy, all sound and fury, the instrumentation almost an […] More »
When an unknown band called Shark Attack appeared as a headliner on the lineup for the 2011 edition of Sappyfest, Julie Doiron thought it was strange even for the little rock festival she helped found in Sackville, New Brunswick, in 2006. “I was looking at the program Thursday night—festival starts on Friday—and I was like […] More »
As a former Polaris Music Prize juror, I still get phantom pain whenever the award shortlist is announced and the inevitable backlash begins (for well thought-out criticism read Josiah Hughes and Mark Teo’s essay, “Canadian Music is Boring,” in FFWD.) But I’m guilty of award bashing, too. After reading the shortlist, I immediately grumbled about […] More »
Shooting Guns are a wonderful anomaly. The instrumental, psychedelic doom metal band from Saskatoon recently had their album Born To Deal In Magic: 1952-1976 included on the Polaris Prize Long List, to my utter surprise and delight. Rather than approach the task of making an instrumental record as a chance to show off pure technical […] More »
Whenever I think about the pursuit of fame (the pre-Kardashian era), my mind automatically tracks back to reruns of the 1980s TV show Fame, and Debbie Allen warning Leroy et al about the price of pursuing your creative dreams. “Fame costs and right here’s where you start paying – in sweat,” Allen warns her students, […] More »
Grungy, seductive, and lusciously poisonous, Winnipeg’s This Hisses are a band I have been aching to see live for ages. They are often categorized as surf rock – as their album title Surf Noir alludes to – but there is more sepia than sunblock in their sound, as much cabaret as beach. Vocalist Julia Ryckman […] More »
Listen here: Biipiiwan — Nibaak — Kingmaker This crashing, abrasive piece is part of the 3-song EP Nibaak that Ottawa weirdos Biipiigwan released in March of 2012. Their sound is a combination of noise rock and sludge metal, disparate elements brought together sheer intuition. This song raises a racket, the acerbic vocals and clattering cymbals […] More »