by JOHNSON CUMMINS

We've all heard the '80s metal odes to being loud. You know, the songs with big, anthemic choruses like "I want to hear it loud" or "Gonna make your ears bleed." Well, those poodle-haired, spandex-clad warriors of rock may have sucked up a storm, but they did make a valid point with their vacant observations - it just ain't rock until the decibel range is liquefying your fillings.

This point wasn't lost on Toronto/Montreal band Cursed, who proudly claim to be the loudest band in Canada. "I think everybody in the band has experienced hearing loss," says singer Chris Colohan, who has admittedly gone from trying to use earplugs during shows to ripping them out after the first song. "You really feel it when you go to sleep at night and you hear a nonstop ringing in your ears, or if you are in a bar with other extraneous noise and you're trying to listen to somebody.

"I have to kind of read their lips now to find out what they're saying, and I'm only 30 years old," he laughs.

Their reputation for loud may be well earned, but Cursed have the bite to back up the bark. Merging Wolverine Blues-era Entombed with good ol' raging thrash, Cursed are hardly just another band with big amps. With a debut on Converge's Deathwish label and all of the big, aggressive rock labels comin' a-courtin', they chose to release their new record Two worldwide on the relatively small Goodfellow label out of Hamilton, Ont. "We're so happy being on that label. The guy who runs the label has been a friend of ours since high school, and since we were doing shows in people's living rooms. We got a lot of big and small labels interested in us, but we really wanted to go with family."

Like any aggressive rock band, Cursed can count on very little radio play to get their music out, and having the wrong haircuts relegates them to little or no coverage in the glossy-paged media. So they promote themselves the only way they know - you guessed it, constant touring (full disclosure: my band is opening the Montreal show). The band just pulled off a gruelling 47-city jaunt through Europe, and were halfway through an American tour when I spoke to Colohan over the phone. It doesn't look like the road has any end in sight.

"We're on tour more than we are ever at home. We keep saying that we'll take some time off, but then we get offered a tour and we just can't seem to say no. It's funny, it's like a double-edged sword because a lot of what I write is about my frustration of living in a city and the barrage of modern life that comes with it. But when I'm on tour, I realize I really miss it."

With Brutal Knights and Bionic
at la Sala Rossa on Saturday, April 2, $10

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