Let’s review

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Although the amount of shows was indeed a little light last weekend, quality definitely reigned over quantity, with two killer bills last Friday night. The place to be for any self-respecting punker was at the A Varning From Montreal festival at les Saints, promoted by the people from Montreal co-op club Katacombes.

Toronto’s Career Suicide stood out amid an evening of dreadlocks and studs, but their Reagan-era thrash clearly won everyone over. Within the first flurry of bar chords, a circle pit opened up as a crowd of largely recovering indie kids did their best imitation of the Huntington Beach strut. The band brought nothing new to the table, using Circle Jerks, early Black Flag and early Boston thrash as their touchstones, but they were so good you could hardly fault them for being derivative.

Next up was probably Montreal’s most respected hardcore band, Inepsy, whose metallic d-beat style capped the night off perfectly. If Career Suicide made no bones about their clever thievery from sunny SoCal, Inepsy also proved to have sticky fingers, nicking their sound from across the pond with a definite Discharge influence and accents of Motörhead and Entombed to keep things interesting. If you love a good, pulverizing blast without any pyrotechnics mucking up the punch, Inepsy are simply unbeatable.

With the piledriving of Inepsy still ringing in my ears, I made it up St-Laurent to la Sala Rossa to catch Fort Miracle. After Inepsy, the only thing that would satiate me would be teeth-gnashing intensity, and unfortunately, Fort Miracle’s random sampled noises over loops possessed a lack of cohesion and aggression that quickly had my mind wandering. Truth be told, though, I seemed to be in the minority as the crowd was hypnotized throughout the half-hour set.

The real reason I trekked up the Main was to check out one half of Lightning Bolt’s side project, Wizzardz, and they truly rose above expectations. A duo of keyboards and drums, Wizzardz set up à la Lightning Bolt, on the floor, as the audience gathered around and were quickly pummelled into a pulp by speeding tempos played with superhuman stamina. Instead of relying too much on dynamic frequencies, the duo let the drums provide the repetitive headbobbing as the electronic blips and bleeps steered clear of predictable sonic destinations.

After Wizzardz blew many a mind with sonic superiority, cards were definitely stacked against headliners Black Dice. True, Wizzardz left the bar well raised, but within the first five minutes of B.D.’s set, it was obvious that this New York three-piece clearly owned the night. With frequencies searing ears, the pounding, primal and electronically treated drums plodded away as knobs were twirled, heads bobbed and the duo created both mayhem and hypnotic psych that scorched right to the centre of your spine. The telepathic language the three used was just jaw-dropping as sheets of white noise would fall, stop on a dime, dig into the dirt and launch back into attack mode for the 45-minute set. One would hope that the recent glut of talentless hacks with loop pedals, guitar effects and a laptop were taking notes, because school was definitely in session here.

Noise annoys… Jonathan.cummins@gmail.com