Montreal: Day 6:
From the line up, this day was looking like it would e the least musically interesting one for me. However, it's a music festival and there's no way I'm going to miss out on checking out the bands I don't know in case I do like them.
We wandered to the venue via a Sushi place so we had something in our stomachs before we started drinking. Given the consistency so far of the 'first band on being one we didn't know turning out to be pretty awesome', we were ready to check out iVardensphere. We bumped into Matt again who explained that from his set the previous night he didn't know about 90% of the stuff that happened in advance. He also said that he'd been asked to join iVardensphere on stage as well. I quickly purchased Edgeys' "Floored" and Caustics' "And you will know be by the trail of vomit" and popped them into the cloakroom with my coat.
We then pootled off to see what iVardenspeher were like.
I found them rather un-interesting so left Tim and Jen to go have a wander around the merch stuff and generally chill out nattering to random people. After the set I caught up with Tim and Jen who quite like the band and thought Matts appearance was fun (which I missed).
Memmaker were up next who I was quite up for seeing. The came on and did a pretty good set, which boded well because I'd bought their album earlier in the week. Harsh electronic Ooonz stuff done quite well. They were followed by Destroid, who seemed oddly synthpop for this second harsh industrial day. They didn't do much for me so I returned to my wanderings and chattings.
Ambassador 21 were harsh but lacked anything that particularly grabbed me. The shouty female vocalist gave their sound an ATR kind of feel but most of their tracks decended into "oonz with added screams" which ended up doing pretty much nothing for me. It's a shame as they could have been something I'd have liked if they changed the screaming to decent (but still harsh) vocals.
Nachtmahr didn't grab me much either. I stuck with them thinking they might play the one track I knew (Madchen in uniform) but I didn't hear it. Given it's a recent single I was a bit surprised but I did nip out for the loo at one point so maybe I missed it. After they came off I wandered again and found a mini-dj battle I didn't know about. Synack vs. Torrent Vaccine. Tim and Jen had already found this and I caught the last ten minutes of it. It was pretty awesome from what I caught and appeared to have 2-3 dj's live mixing stuff in a stomping stylee along with live vjing as well. They had quite a crowding going and when they finished there was a big chant for them to keep going. Unfortunately their time was up, so we wandered back to the main stage area to see who was up next.
Terrorfakt were in my books as something I didn't expect to like, but I was giving every band a listen so we went to give them a listen. What they did was a crazy awesome set of destruction. They started with stomping beats being played while angle grinding oil drums and shopping trollies. They were showering the first 10-15 yards of audience in sparks and I was expecting someone's woolly hair to go up in flames at any moment. While this might be seen as a bit stereotypical for an industrial band it didn't take long to get better. A couple of songs in and there was a stage invasion from about 10 people from other bands. I spotted Matt and Eric but there were loads of others. They turned up on stage with fire axes, lump hammers and generally anything they could find to inflict damage on the trollies and oil drums. The show descended into half hour of bashing chaos accompanied by stomping baselines. By the end of it the oil drums and trollies were deformed almost beyond recognition, and a laptop had been demolished and thrown into the crowd along the way as well.
This show was enormous fun and yet another 'this made it all justified' moment. I didn't think the music on its own was that impressive but Tim and Jen seemed to enjoy it.
Tactical Sekt had a hard act to follow but given they were the only band on the roster with a UK member we figured we'd show our support. Unfortunately they didn't do anything special for me and it was hard to enjoy them. Hypnoskull were a band I didn't enjoy much a few years back when the played Infest but I gave them another shot in case they had changed or my music tastes had altered. It seemed they hadn't and I hadn't and I likened their set to a 45 minute blipvert. I found it hard to stick around as they had pretty much constant strobes going for most of their set. I took a break and went for a wander.
Hocico were not quite how I remember them sounding but they still didn't work for me. It seemed Tim and Jen weren't up for seeing Dive and Fabric C and we were all very knackered so we bailed back to the hotel for sleep. It also didn't help that Sunday morning we were due to move hotels so we knew we couldn't lie in and that we had to pack and be out the hotel by midday. The early night really helped in allowing us to get up in time to do all this.
We wandered to the venue via a Sushi place so we had something in our stomachs before we started drinking. Given the consistency so far of the 'first band on being one we didn't know turning out to be pretty awesome', we were ready to check out iVardensphere. We bumped into Matt again who explained that from his set the previous night he didn't know about 90% of the stuff that happened in advance. He also said that he'd been asked to join iVardensphere on stage as well. I quickly purchased Edgeys' "Floored" and Caustics' "And you will know be by the trail of vomit" and popped them into the cloakroom with my coat.
We then pootled off to see what iVardenspeher were like.
I found them rather un-interesting so left Tim and Jen to go have a wander around the merch stuff and generally chill out nattering to random people. After the set I caught up with Tim and Jen who quite like the band and thought Matts appearance was fun (which I missed).
Memmaker were up next who I was quite up for seeing. The came on and did a pretty good set, which boded well because I'd bought their album earlier in the week. Harsh electronic Ooonz stuff done quite well. They were followed by Destroid, who seemed oddly synthpop for this second harsh industrial day. They didn't do much for me so I returned to my wanderings and chattings.
Ambassador 21 were harsh but lacked anything that particularly grabbed me. The shouty female vocalist gave their sound an ATR kind of feel but most of their tracks decended into "oonz with added screams" which ended up doing pretty much nothing for me. It's a shame as they could have been something I'd have liked if they changed the screaming to decent (but still harsh) vocals.
Nachtmahr didn't grab me much either. I stuck with them thinking they might play the one track I knew (Madchen in uniform) but I didn't hear it. Given it's a recent single I was a bit surprised but I did nip out for the loo at one point so maybe I missed it. After they came off I wandered again and found a mini-dj battle I didn't know about. Synack vs. Torrent Vaccine. Tim and Jen had already found this and I caught the last ten minutes of it. It was pretty awesome from what I caught and appeared to have 2-3 dj's live mixing stuff in a stomping stylee along with live vjing as well. They had quite a crowding going and when they finished there was a big chant for them to keep going. Unfortunately their time was up, so we wandered back to the main stage area to see who was up next.
Terrorfakt were in my books as something I didn't expect to like, but I was giving every band a listen so we went to give them a listen. What they did was a crazy awesome set of destruction. They started with stomping beats being played while angle grinding oil drums and shopping trollies. They were showering the first 10-15 yards of audience in sparks and I was expecting someone's woolly hair to go up in flames at any moment. While this might be seen as a bit stereotypical for an industrial band it didn't take long to get better. A couple of songs in and there was a stage invasion from about 10 people from other bands. I spotted Matt and Eric but there were loads of others. They turned up on stage with fire axes, lump hammers and generally anything they could find to inflict damage on the trollies and oil drums. The show descended into half hour of bashing chaos accompanied by stomping baselines. By the end of it the oil drums and trollies were deformed almost beyond recognition, and a laptop had been demolished and thrown into the crowd along the way as well.
This show was enormous fun and yet another 'this made it all justified' moment. I didn't think the music on its own was that impressive but Tim and Jen seemed to enjoy it.
Tactical Sekt had a hard act to follow but given they were the only band on the roster with a UK member we figured we'd show our support. Unfortunately they didn't do anything special for me and it was hard to enjoy them. Hypnoskull were a band I didn't enjoy much a few years back when the played Infest but I gave them another shot in case they had changed or my music tastes had altered. It seemed they hadn't and I hadn't and I likened their set to a 45 minute blipvert. I found it hard to stick around as they had pretty much constant strobes going for most of their set. I took a break and went for a wander.
Hocico were not quite how I remember them sounding but they still didn't work for me. It seemed Tim and Jen weren't up for seeing Dive and Fabric C and we were all very knackered so we bailed back to the hotel for sleep. It also didn't help that Sunday morning we were due to move hotels so we knew we couldn't lie in and that we had to pack and be out the hotel by midday. The early night really helped in allowing us to get up in time to do all this.