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| Last Bullet at Indie Music Week 2012 |
Oct 19 2012 – While Indie Week Canada may be late in the year, it has many top local and not so local bands that define the indie scene. While many prefer to take a second mortgage to see U2 from the balcony of Rogers center, seeing a number of bands in a cozy intimate setting for a low price is hard to beat. Like other music festivals, Indie week offers a full slate of music with the potential for a pub crawl even at this time of year. Toronto is blessed with 3 such music festivals: Canadian Music Week (read our recap here), NXNE (read our recap here) and Indie Week.
Indie Week Canada runs for 5 nights (Oct 10-14) at 19 venues in Toronto and featuresmusic industry and digital media panels and most importantly live music. The event has been around for 8 years and offers the balance of a festival with a contest. The winner headlines Indie Week Ireland, the other location for the Indie Week festival. As expected the Winner of Indie Week Ireland wins a trip to Canada and T-Mak World did catch the winner of the past 2 winners from Indie Week Ireland at this year’s festival in Toronto.
The 2012 event included over 175 bands and we were able to take in the shows of a number of bands that well represented the variety in the indie scene today. Our coverage started with Breached at Bovine on Thursday and ended with Altimira on Sunday at Rivoli and include a whole bunch a great bands in between.
On Thursday, T-Mak World experienced Breached, Sumo Cyco, Raised Emotionally Dead, Rabid Whole, The Killing Floor, Last Bullet, The C’Mons and Sex With Strangers.
Breached
Breached is a modern alternative rock band from Toronto who rocked the Bovine on Thursday Oct 11. Singer Bobby Noakes has a powerful voice with a hard edge and excellent supporting band that will get them comparisons to Stone Temple Pilots. T-Mak World looks forward to continuing to see how this relatively new band, formed in 2010, will continue to grow. They are working on a new album and will be playing in the Toronto area again in December according to Bobby Noakes.
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| Breached at Indie Music Week 2012 |
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| Breached at Indie Music Week 2012 |
Sumo Cyco
T-Mak World experienced Sumo Cyco at NXNE and one of my fellow editors, John Dash picked them for one of his “gig of the night” (read that review here) . Having seen them for the first time at Bovine on Thursday I fully understand why. The great mix of punk, funk, metal and rock with a scintillating female lead. For Indie Week lead singer Sever showed the diversity of her outfits as well as her voice and had the audience will engaged for a great set. There is no rest for the weary as they are playing The Hideout on Oct 19. 2012. If you have not seen their show, check them out.
http://www.sumocyco.com/
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| Sumo Cyco at Indie Week 2012 |
Rabid Whole
T-Mak World caught Rabid Whole at Bovine at NXNE earlier this year (read that recap here) and for Indie Week they returned to that familiar home on Queen. They packed the Bovine and had one of the most enthusiastic and wild crowds at Indie week. Their music is a mix of industrial and metal. Seeing that their second album was mixed by Dave Ogilvie who worked with NiN and Skinny Puppy and produced by Karl Schubach (Misery Signals) one can see why a band that is a cross between Judas Priest and NiN is popular and tailor made for Bovine.
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| Rabid Whole at Indie Week 2012 |
Raised Emotionally Dead
R.E.D played in between Sumo Cyco and Rabid Whole at the Bovine on Thursday. They played a mix of hard rock/metal/industrial that is a good fit with the bands that played and had a good stage presence.
http://www.raisedemotionallydead.com
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| Raised Emotionally Dead at Indie Week 2012 |
Last Bullet
Last Bullet, a guitar driven hard rock band that is working hard to perfect their craft and playing 3x at Indie week is a good example of their dedication. They play hard and powerful rock and they are very good at what they do. They played 3 times and covered songs from the latest album Love. Lust. Illusion. [Ed. Note – Last Bullet is one of the bands that we know well and love and we even had the chance to interview them for our Emerging Artist Spotlight (read here). I heard great things about your set guys. T-Mak]
http://www.lastbulletmusic.com/
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| Last Bullet at Indie Music Week 2012 |
The Killing Floor
Hailing from New York and playing music that is influenced by both the best of English and American rock over the last 20 years. The band looks and sounds like polished rocks stars and has released their debut self-titled album. With their latest video for Star Baby being directed by Joel Schumacher, if you have not heard of them yet, you will very shortly in the future.
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| The Killing Floor at Indie Music Week 2012 |
The C’Mons
The C’Mons are a local band that offers the interesting mix of modern alt-rock with diverse vocals and a violin player. Lead singer Stephanie Bosch is reminiscent of Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries at times and at other times has a more soulful or even pop like sound. They will please most except maybe a hardcore metal fan.
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| The C’Mons at Indie Week 2012 |
Sex with Strangers
Sex with Strangers is a band from Vancouver that is hard to describe in words, they must be experienced. Their music is described as both new wave and rock, however, perhaps the best way to describe the band is the answer to a question. What would you get if Tenacious D merged with the B52’s and added a dash of My Morning Jacket?
Organized chaos it is, boring it is not. Even if you do not like their music which is also very good, you will go away thoroughly entertained. The band switches effortlessly between male lead singer Hatch Benedict and female lead singer Alexis Young. Hatch spends more time dancing in the crowd and interacting with the audience than on stage. At one point even asking the audience do you want to hear a Metal song or 60s ballad? The obvious answer was metal. The not so obvious answer is to ask for a Mashup. Next time I encourage the crowd to ask for just that. However I think this multi-dimensional and talented crew could pull that off as well.
When not formulating the ethos of chaos by interacting with the audience he sings with the passion of Jack Black or Gordon Downie and the band is very proficient at matching the enthusiasm of their singers. While T-Mak World saw them at Hideout on Thursday, they also played at Velvet Underground during Indie Week on Friday and were the winners of the gig of the night at that venue.
PS. If you are going to “google” them add the word “band” after or else be prepared to do some ‘splaining to your wife or boss.
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| Sex With Strangers at Indie Music Week 2012 |
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| Sex With Strangers at Indie Music Week 2012 |
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| Sex With Strangers at Indie Music Week 2012 |
