“You’d think a lot of bands would half-ass a free show, drugs ” remarked one particularly stunned fan as a capacity crowd filed out of The Sinclair on a late Thursday evening, cialis “but they brought it.” They, order of course, were Metz, the Canadian noise rock trio who headlined the night’s Converse Rubber Tracks show, and the level of eardrum-shredding intensity they had maintained for the previous hour was anything but half-assed.
Metz’s self-titled debut record is a ferocious half-hour of pounding drums and serrated guitars, and it’s the sort of material that requires a certain level of enraged commitment to execute live. Thankfully, Alex Edkins, Chris Slorach and Hayden Menzies have such commitment in spades. Slorach would offer the occasional introduction to a song, with brief but ominous summations like, “this one’s about voices in your head,” before Menzies’ thundering drums barreled through the room. Edkins in particular seemed to never stand still, convulsing with the jittery live-wire energy of a man with way too much caffeine in his system. He nearly flung his guitar across the stage or into the crowd on numerous occasions before reeling it back in at the last second. His Jazzmaster sported a vintage-looking matte black finish, but it’s entirely conceivable that such a look has resulted from the instrument being drenched in sweat night after night.
A Metz performance is an exercise in sheer physicality, from the blaring volume to the band’s own nervy stage presence and the pit that inevitably opens up by the second song. They translate an excellent record into a show that lives up to every ounce of its bludgeoning potential. Their set clocked in at just under an hour, even with extended songs and a new track for an encore, but I doubt there was a single audience member who felt short-changed.
The night’s bill was rounded out by Desert Sharks and The Men, both of New York heritage. Desert Sharks’ noisy surf-punk was a solid opening act, and the quartet earned style points for matching back-patches. Shape-shifting punk-rockers The Men put on a set that, like their recent recorded output, felt polarizing. The band’s shift away from straightforward punk and into psychedelic and country-tinged songs was reflected in their brief set, which was mostly comprised of propulsive drum and bass grooves accented by keyboard, steel guitar and the occasional blast of good old-fashioned feedback. The Men’s fusion of their noisy roots with more ambitious sounds and song structures sounded great from where I was standing, but judging by the largely arms-crossed crowd, the sentiment was not universal.
