Top 5 Canadian Releases of 2009

I love being Canadian. And I love Canadian Metal. Some Canadian music makes me ashamed (Celine Dion, Anne Murray, Nickelback), some rocks (Neil Young, Rush), but Canadian Metal makes me proud. Here's the Top 5 Canadian releases that made me proud to be Canadian in 2009.

5. Arise & Ruin - Nightstorms Hailfire (Guelph, ON): Vicious metalcore sans clean vox. I was told by vocalist Ryan Bauchman himself that he will never lighten up his vocals. Good. Hints of doom and thrash work their way into the mix. All this makes for one hell of a live show.

4. Culted - Beyond the Thunders of the Upper Deep (Winnepeg, MB/Sweden): This Winnepeg duo's collaboration with a Swedish vocalist produced some heavy fuckin' shit. Seriously awesome doom with scary blackened vocals. Best enjoyed loud as hell and blazed out of your mind.

3. Ex Deo - Romulus (Montreal, PQ): Some bands create concept albums, some bands create concept bands. Ex Deo is basically Kataklysm doing Roman themed epic metal. Nothing wrong with that! Great music and a history lesson all in one. Battle of the Bands idea: Ex Deo vs. Nile.

2. Buried Inside - Spoils of Failure (Ottawa, ON): Bands like this I find hard to categorize. Pummeling doomy music with hardcore-ish bellowed Neurosis type vocals. The song titles are Roman numerals and I can't understand most of the vocals but they've always been a very cerebral band. I'd like to see a lyric sheet. I challenge you to try and not scream along anyway. This album rules.

1. Titan - Colossus EP (Toronto, ON): More or less in the same vein as Buried Inside but with more variation musically and vocally. "Bangover"-inducing ferocity throughout with just enough breathing room to recover before you pass out. I managed to see Titan live twice in 2009 and both times they kicked my ass! Extra kudos to the band for knocking out the power to a city block during one of their shows. That's fuckin' metal.

Honourable Mentions: 3 Inches of Blood and Bastard Child Death Cult.

Tops of 2009 list update

So I started listening to the 90 or so albums on my iPod. I'm going in alpha order for now.
Here's some of the albums that are NOT gonna make it.

Black Dahlia Murder - Deflorate (not my fave style of metal and the vocals get irritating after a while)
Arise & Ruin - Nightstorms Hailfire (I'm friends with these guys, I hang out with them at their shows. I want to include them but album has some weak spots. Great guys and great live show)
Batillus - (can't remember) (pretty good instrumental doom/drone but it got boring in parts. comes with the territory)

Coalesce - OX ( some pretty good parts but it just wasn't doing anything for me. Call me crazy.)

Daath - The Concealers (The new one lacks all the quirkiness/electronics that made the last one so appealing.)

Dethklok - Dethalbum II (it's good and has lots and lots of circle-headbang appeal but it's band based on a TV show. An AWESOME tv show but a tv show nonetheless.)

Despised Icon - (I'm drawing a blank) (Cream of the deathcore crop but that's like being the best player on, say, the Redskins. It's still metal/football and it's better than rock/basketball but there is way better. Brootal Death Metal/ the Saints. and worse. Crabcore/Lions, Rams etc)

Crippled Black Phoenix - 200 Tons of Bad Luck (on the light side and very situation/mood/state of mind dependant)

Devildriver - Pray for Villians ( t'would be better to pray for Dez. The band is great but I feel Dez is the weak link. It is wrong that I kinda/sometimes/almost like Coal Chamber better than this album?)

There is about 6 maybes in that alpha range but considering there is about 8 or 9 probables in that range too, I doubt they'll make it

3 Inches of Blood w/ Arise and Ruin and guests @ Time to Laugh, Kingston, ON Oct. 18, 2009

3 Inches of Blood said they hadn't been to Kingston in 3 years. Arise and Ruin have been to Kingston 3 times THIS year. Whatever the frequency, Kingston (and I) were glad to have them both. The support acts were CFPT, We Are the Archers, and Fathom Ties. Here's the rundown:

CFPT: Beats me! I was still driving there.

We Are The Archers: For most of their set I was takin' a dump at the Pizza Pizza then smokin' a joint in a back alley. I think I caught the last song but I wasn't paying attention. At the end of their set, the singer says "We are We Are The Archers! (slight pause) That's the name of the band, We Are The Archers". It made me think of that P.O.D. song, "Youth of a Nation". Not the music, just the "We are, we are" part. Maybe it's time for a name change.

Fathom Ties: They seemed like a pretty confident bunch. But confidence will only take you so far (with me). I wasn't real impressed by them. They were very well rehearsed and looked like they believed in their music, but it just wasn't my thing. They did that whole synced guitar/headbang thing. Ya know, to a breakdown. They reminded me a lot of Incubus. The sappy-ass nu-metal one. Not the old school one that I've never actually heard. There were kids going apeshit though. Good for them. They'll come around eventually. At one time, I liked Incubus. Oh and when the singer was like "Let's hear it for ...." he said "3 Inches IN Blood." Ouch.

Arise and FUCKING RUIN!!!!!!!! These hardworkin' Guelphites never fail to put on a kick ass show. They are wicked tight. Vocalist Ryan Bauchman is a force. Dude is so full of energy! I love it. He's grabbin' people by the shirt and screamin' in their face. He's jumpin' off the monitors. He's screamin' and sweatin' and tearin' that place apart. The rest of the band aren't slouches either. For instance, I had to move over because I kept getting whipped by Sam's hair. Hell yeah. Come back again soon boys!

3 Inches of Blood: I have to admit, I set my hopes really high for this. Too high for anything to have lived up to it. The last show I was at was Clutch, so nothing could live up to that. With that being said, 3IOB did put on a great show. I think they needed a bigger stage though. Technically, they were spot on. I don't know if it was just where I was standing or what but I could only really hear the vocals and bass guitar. That wasn't really a bad thing. The bass is hard to pick up on the album, so being able to hear (and see) it live was kinda nice. I could hear the drums too. It was just the guitar that was kinda low in the mix. When I was reviewing Here Awaits Thy Doom, I mentioned how I missed Jamie Hooper's vocals and Justin Hagberg did a decent job but not great. He made up for it live. His screams were great. Very good interplay with the spot-on performance of Cam "He Who Is Most Aptly Named" Pipes. (I need to trademark that) They played a nice mix of tunes from the new album as well as some older stuff. The crowd reacted just as fervently no matter what they played. Many a lyric were sung, many a fist were pumped, many a head were banged, and when the 3 song encore finished with "The Goatrider's Horde", many an ear left ringing.

Quick Hits

Arise and Ruin - Night Storms Hailfire: Fucking awesome. Very well
produced. You can really hear the hardcore but it has a very metal feel. It
is loaded with absolutely killer riffs. Good job boys.

Wino - Puncuated Equilibrium: Scott "Wino" Weinrich is like the Lemmy of
stoner rock. You know right away who it is, but you also know what to
expect. In Wino's case, sweet riffs, sweeter tone and some good solid
stoner tunes. If you liked The Hidden Hand, Spirit Caravan, St. Vitus or
any other Wino band, you'll dig this.

I listened to The Silent Enigma by Anathema the other day. Meh, not my
thing. I listened to the whole thing so that's something but I wasn't blown
away. So I won't go looking for anything else in their discography.

Live Review: Darkest Hour w/ Born of Osiris, Dead and Divine, Arise and Ruin, Fall to Ashes

Feb 4, 2009: Time To Laugh, Kingston, Ontario

Locals Fall to Ashes opened the show. Bunch of clowns if you ask me. The 2 guitarists were wearing Ferris Bueller sunglasses. The vocalist didn't even take off his coat.(it was FUCKING cold out) and the whole band just basically stood there and bobbed their heads. They couldn't even chug-chug-noodle-noodle-deathcore growl their way through a half-hour set without playing a cover.(Parkway Drive) Good effort boys but you have some work to do.

Guelph's Arise and Ruin know how to put on a show. They recently parted ways with guitarist Greg, and brought in a guy named Sam to fill in. He was a fan of the band and knew all the songs cold anyway. He did a great job. They played mostly stuff off their new disc, Night Storms Hailfire (released Feb 17). From what I heard, it sounded pretty killer. I'll have to pick up the disc and give it a listen in a more controlled environment. Vocalist Ryan Bauchmann assured me he's not going to mellow out anytime soon and guitarist Brent Munger let me know that they really like Sam and will probably keep him. Thanks to Mike the merch guy for the sweet deal on the hoodie.

I will admit that I didn't pay attention to Toronto's Dead and Divine because they were too emo for my tastes. Besides, I am an asshole and the singer was wearing a long coat and a scarf and looked like a real metrosexual, so I automatically dismissed him as a douchebag. Proabably a real nice guy though.

I didn't want to like Born of Osiris but they weren't too bad. I could do without the keyboards and the Human Abstract/PTH guitar work but for being just kids, they really know their way around their instruments. The drummer was particularly impressive. I'd watch em again but I am not going out to buy the albums.

I set my hopes too high for Darkest Hour. I listened to all their back catalogue a couple times and was really excited. I speculated about the playlist, tried to remember lyrics and brought my copy of Undoing Ruin to get signed (didn't get it signed). Alas, I was let down. Their performance seemed almost choreographed to me. Up on the monitor, back down, switch positions, up on the monitor....It might have looked better were I in a different position. I was 3 or 4 deep, off to one side so I could only see half the stage. Maybe if I had gone to one of the high tables at the back, I could have seen better. And it would of had a different effect. They played a bunch from Deliver Us, and a nice mix from about Hidden Hands....on up. They put on a good show, (plenty of kids losing their minds) I just think I wasn't in the right frame of mind that night. I high too high expectations, I was exhausted before I even got there, I was disappointed I didn't get the chance to interview them for this blog, and it was only the second in show in YEARS that I attended stone cold sober. That being said, as out of it as I was, a good enough show would have been able to snap me out of it. Worth the $15 anyway.

Lesson learned though, so I won't get as excited before the Cattle Decapitation show in April.