by Metz
Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies and Chris Slorach have been around long enough to know that if you can’t fit it in the van, it’s not worth bringing. Toronto-based METZ play like one brutally heavy instrument with three heads, slashing heavy-gauge strings, bending guitar and bass necks in weird unison, along with what is probably the loudest drumming you’ve ever heard.
It’s a formidable task to try and capture such a powerful live band on record. Luckily, producers Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) and Alexandre Bonenfant (Crystal Castles, Maylee Todd) were more than up for it. Isolating the band in an old barn for a week with a portable recording rig, Walsh and Bonenfant were not only successful in documenting the unrelenting live force of the band, but they also managed to add some new and staggering sonic textures to the recording. Waves of organic feedback and fuzzed-out drones build the classic tension that eventually drops into each track’s relentless, dissonant pulse. And somehow, the raddest thing about it all is the songwriting. It’s not just riffs. It’s something that some heavy bands don’t get, but METZ do really well—and they do it collectively.
A frantic nod to The Pixies amongst others, METZ over the last three-and-a-half years have slayed in basements, skate shops, clubs, and festivals, sharing stages with Mission of Burma, Death from Above 1979, Mudhoney, Constantines, and NoMeansNo.
It’s a return to everything that’s good about loud, ecstatic live music; METZ's debut self titled album is out this 5th October on Sub Pop | Inertia.
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