TOONED & REMEMBERED!
ZERO BOYS!
Midwest punk rock legends come full circle
Okay – what single spark connects the punk rock dots to make this unimaginable equation from lying somewhere between the Twilight Zone and some LSD-fueled kid's rambling hypergraphia? First, let's take the way-back machine for a ride to Indiana circa fall '79, pick up some teenaged compadres and form a legendary and pivotal punk rock band called the Zero Boys. In rapid succession, release two seriously incendiary records (Living in the 80s & Vicious Circle) before blinking and tour North America holding their own live with heavyweights including the Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat. Then, return home to helm landmark releases by Toxic Reasons, Sloppy Seconds, Raw Power and help to define a signature “midwest” sound that's uniquely tight, crisp and (gasp!) cerebral.
BOG
Ain’t Nothing But A Swamp Thang
Five months ago vocalist Johnny Matter pulled a bit of a shocker when, true to his promiscuous band swapping ways, he abruptly left Vancouver metal upstarts Anion (after five years and almost directly after their debut album was released). After hearing Matter was a free agent I was rather excited when I was invited down to his jam space to check out his latest project and Vancouver’s newest band called BOG. Matter has always been in some seriously heavy hitting bands over the years. Not only that, his production company, Apocalypse Sunrise, has produced some of this city’s finest underground music festivals over the last five years. Matter gets around and is well versed when it comes to the ways of extreme music. The band came together amazingly a mere month after Matter’s exodus from Anion. So I went in with high expectations.
WALL OF SOUND - MAY
May music news and gig announcements
There is a new garage rock outfit The Bad Beats in town with Adam Payne (x of the Hathaways), Cam Alexander on vocals, Jon Card on drums, Randy Rudland on bass and Sylvia Lim playing keys. Check out “It Breaks Me Down” as fans of rock’n roll may dig this.
WTCHDR
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| Ted Reckoning photo |
Seek Help Now
Don’t let the grim sounds of WTCHDR fool you because they are really a bunch of swell guys. They really are. But if you dig into their second full length record Triumph and Despair (released April 2nd) you may get a bleak, ominous feeling inside your wretched stomach right off the bat.
With lead off track, “The Pilgrimage”, laid down like a stone blanket on a bed of nails Bending dissident chords, doomtastic guitar squeals, is completed with a deranged mad man on vocals.
If you dive even further into the lyrical content you will not see any light or a tunnel - just a big cave in of agony and feelings of helplessness.
SUBCULTURE MAY
Man, this great city just sucks sometimes ... Every time I hear about a D.I.Y. attempt to contribute something edgy and different, like clockwork, they get bombarded with the dog and pony show of red tape ... It makes me shake my head ... Having waded through the double whammy of also having the same slumlords on top of it, I can relate ...
This sounds suspiciously like the soundproofing farce of 5 years ago, that seemed mandatory for only certain parties ... How are the existing businesses in the D.T.E.S. able to be operating without mandated upgrades from grid electrical wiring ... Does BC Hydro expect that the building will still be standing after the bigwig real estate roulette table is spun ten stories high on that block ... This seems to be a feeble attempt to thwart the potential of anything positive happening at that address, when they'd actually prefer making the building slowly rot into another convenient plot of community gardens that stretch to the next shuttered property ... There must be a need to keep up with the condo Joneses that are lurking across the street ...
NECK OF THE WOODS
No Bush League Here
Call it a Craigslist miracle! It’s not as if Vancouver metal band Neck Of The Woods came together easy, but it came together nicely. Searching for prospective band members via the musicians-wanted classifieds is always a daunting task for any band. Drunks, addicts, flakes, ex-cons, too-good-for-this, and useless-at-that can make it a torturous process. Managing to avoid all that – Neck of the Woods arrived on the local metal scene in 2012.
Neck Of The Wood’s guitarist Dave Carr has been in various projects over the years. The frustration of short-lived bands had set in so he proceeded to find players for something new. Ads were placed and many answered.
OFF!
Showing the kids how to get OFF!
Try to imagine John Lennon fronting the Beatles and the Stones, and, then, a few years later starting a band with Mick Ronson, Dennis Thompson and Dee Dee Ramone – just because he felt like it. Put the CV of Keith Morris in perspective here for just a second and connect the punk rock dots a bit to see that the man has had, and is having, a pretty good run as a driving force in some of the most all-time relevant A-List West Coast Punk Rock Combos. As a founding member of both Black Flag & the Circle Jerks, he's hit the highest highs of the rock and roll life and it's excesses, then almost kicked more bucket than ass before his resurgence as a pissed off force/freak of nature sporting even more mojo in his mid-50's than he had as a trailblazing hyperactive twenty-something.
REBEL SPELL
photo by John Marshall @ The Grosvenor in London
Getting Serious with Todd Serious from the Rebel Spell
Getting to interview Todd Serious from Vancouver’s most political punk band The Rebel Spell is rare these days but so are their shows in Vancouver now. “It's hard. I miss Vancouver a lot but then it's so much more awesome when I get here. It's constantly changing, definitely moved out of the pseudo-commercial venues it was in.”
February 2003 was their first show ever, so they just passed 11 years as a band. Asking Todd about his latest concerns, he responds with, “Honestly, I'm working hard to resist falling in to a nihilistic mental state. I feel really overwhelmed with the trajectory of society. And I'm sure a lot of people feel that. But I think it's super important to maintain a positive outlook. Remember that even though the big picture is really bleak, individuals like you and I, and everyone, can make a difference day to day in just keeping things a little bit better. And really, that's what's within our power so we should strive for that. And I'm striving to keep it positive in an overwhelmingly negative context. My friends go that way, I go that way. Support each other, because that's all we've really got.”
WALL OF SOUND - APRIL
Local music news and gig listing
The Flintettes are here - and they'll be giving you Goosebumps after the Honeymoon! A new arrival in Vancouver is this trio which is made up of CC on drums (Vancougar) Marissa on bass (Dizzy Eyes) and Michael, guitar (The Tranzmitors). Vocals are shared between them in this six month old pop blending combo. They have a single coming out in in April on La Ti Da records, with the final piece of music recorded at the now closed Hive Studio.
They will be appearing April 12th with The Isotopes at the Electric Owl. Check them out! http://www.latidarecords.com/tag/the-flintettes
BISON
Old name becomes new again for seasoned headbanger
For most heavy bands, being dropped by a major metal label might be a detrimental situation, but, when Metal Blade Records chose to release them about a year ago, the band Bison b.c. took it all in stride. After seven years and a three-album output the two camps have gone their separate ways. “They got to run a business and we aren’t making any money for anybody. So we had to go. That’s it. No hard feelings,” guitarist/vocalist Dan And deadpans. And if this seems like a step backwards these guys will have nothing of it. “We know enough people who put out records,” And says. “We don’t need some big label down in the states or whatever.” The mighty Bison does not slow easily and rumbles on.
GRASS CITY
Triumphant Glory Blues Rock
Grass City is back! And back with a glorious reprisal. They have emerged once again with the release of their epic new album, Through Harvest There’s Hope.
“It’s a personal vendetta,” as vocalist/guitarist Kurtis Dernisky likes to put it. “The title is so fitting to what we just went through in the last four years. It was like harvesting our own baby. We just nurtured this shit and just love it, just like a child.”
It has been four years since we’ve heard a peep from this crew but after one listen to the new album it’s quite apparent that it was well worth the wait. Four years of soul searching, personal tragedies, and nose-to-the-grindstone writing sessions are most often the perfect ingredients to cook up a nerve chilling musical slab of legendary proportions. And that has been the underlying story of what Grass City has done.
WALL OF SOUND - FEBRUARY
Gigs, news and venues too!
On Saturday, Feb. 1 at the Railway Club are a few heavy hitters that you don’t wanna miss: Blacked Out, Cliffjumper, Legion Of Goons & Spree Killers. Probably the punkest show that is closest to the downtown core that night.
SUBCULTURE FEBRUARY
As yet again I rush to write this column I wonder if I’m repeating myself ... I figured I’d just scribble down a bunch of musings at work as I’m listening to extremely loud death metal... Hey, it actually ripped me away from twiddling with my phone for a couple of hours...
I had an interesting conversation with a cab driver the other night... As I was checking the NHL app on my phone for the hockey scores, he chimed in about how the world is changing people’s attention spans with technology...
DISWORSHIP
Brains, speed and volume
“We like our doomy sludge yet are compelled to grind, grind, grind,” says vocalist, Mark Skwarok, on the topic of influences such as Eyehategod, Phobia, Insect Warfare and Noothgrush.
Disworship evolved from the ashes of Cathar with Freya Giles on drums and vocals, (Nun Un, Cathar), Greg Dinardo on guitar (Strain, Write Off), Scott Bartlett on guitar (Nun Un, Destroy All) and Kavan Cronin on bass (Memorial, Night Terrors, Brains). “We went through some member changes and our music began to change,” says Skwarok. With that, came a new name.
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