Municipally wasted

The fine folks at Extensive Enterprise hosted two nights of blistering hardcore and metal at Foufounes on Sunday, Dec. 6 with the Dillinger Escape Plan, and on Monday Dec. 7 with Cauldron, Brutal Truth and Municipal Waste.

The Dillinger Escape Plan were of course as fierce as ever, with yet another new drummer in tow (their third). With barely a peep from them since 2007’s Ire Works, their set consisted of a lot of new material off of the soon-to-be-released uw that continues to delve into mathcore and electronica, but it was old gems like “Panosonic Youth,” “Fix Your Face,” “Mouth of Ghosts,” “Sunshine the Werewolf,” “Sugar Coated Sour” and “43% Burnt” that were particular standouts. Even with both guitars and bass all going down throughout the set (for a brief moment all at once), the Dillinger Escape Plan still proved to be one of the most intense bands ever to take a stage. If you missed this, fear not—they’re headlining here in March. Topping the bill, oddly enough, was screamo band Thursday, who like all emo bands completely sucked back in the day, but their style gets even more ravaged at the tail end of 2009. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to wrinkle my nose at their stink. Half the room had cleared out before they finished the first song.

On Monday night, I made it back to Foufs just in time to catch Toronto’s Cauldron (ex-Goat Horn) wowing a scattered and bemused crowd with classic metal posturing and poppy Bay Area thrash that lacked any edge. Next up were grind legends Brutal Truth, who I haven’t seen since 1992 but were just as brutal as ever. As far as straight-ahead grind goes, this is as good as it gets.

Truthfully, I was really there just to see Brutal Truth, but the mayhem that ensued during Municipal Waste’s set was one of the greatest stage-diving shows I’ve ever seen. I will be in the minority here, but musically, they’re a poor man’s D.R.I. at best. They were, though, hugely entertaining throughout—the ultimate soundtrack to cheap beer. The real star of the show was actually the audience, which rained down from the tall stage like punk rock lemmings—half of them just hit the ground. Do yourself a favour and YouTube them right now.

There is a host of wicked wingdings happening this week. On Saturday, you can check out the doom of Evoken, Longing for Dawn, Towards Darkness and Ghast at la Sala Rossa. Along with the show at Dollar Cinema on Thursday (see p. 17 for the story), the show of the week could be Cool Fest 9, which moves it up north to Eastern Bloc on Saturday night. Performing are New York City’s Lori Napoleon, Bill Nace and Mother Earth, Detroit’s Sick Llama and Cotton Museum, Yamantaka//Sonic Titan (now Toronto-based), Ottawa’s Total Crush and Holy Cobras and Montreal’s own Monday Morning Erection and Cat Pontoon. LSD simulation through sight and sound will be in effect during and in between the sets. Hint: get there early!

STILL CALCULATING INFINITY…JONATHAN.CUMMINS@GMAIL.COM