While crushing stoner metal is the easiest way to describe the vast, fuzzed-out sound of Vancouver-based Anciients, to limit them to this description is a disservice. Beneath the fat, distorted guitar tone and acrid smokiness is a deep vulnerability. There are moments of wonder, of tentative exploration on their debut, Heart of Oak, that speaks […] More »

One of the things that sets Vancouver’s Bison B.C. apart from their peers is their caustic, merciless vision. On their facebook page, they list their band interests as “getting up early and driving to a far away place hungover.” They write clearly and unflinchingly about the most grotesque moments of loneliness and loss, those moments […] More »

Devin Townsend is the closest thing that the Canadian heavy music scene has to a genuine mad scientist. Every single one of his records is ax experiment, often combining wildly different elements and influences into a complex, roiling alchemical reaction. Some of his recent work, like Deconstruction, has been incredibly heavy an complex, deploying full […] More »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »