June 22 2017 – When you find out that all three members of TimeGiant are involved on a new musical project you take notice.
When you go see this project entitled The Snake Spine Shivers on a Wednesday night and get rocked to the core you want the world to take notice.
The Snake Spine Shivers debuted a remarkable piece of music entitled The Devil’s Tower on June 21 2017 at Toronto’s The Paddock (right beside Healey’s old bar). A massive rock opus that is refreshing as it is ambitious. The project took 2 years to hatch and is the mastermind of Gary Morissette. Devil’s Tower is presented in 2 epic movements simply entitled Side 1 and Side 2. Reminiscent of the classic prog rock songs like Genesis’s Supper Ready, Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick or Pink Floyd’s Echoes due to their length and musical complexity, The Devil’s Tower takes those elements from the prog classics and combines them with a hard rock/metal sound similar to Iron Maiden’s Empire of the Clouds or The Rime Of the Ancient Mariner. The end result is something so unique and deep that it left us emotionally charged even the day after. The two songs evoked emotions from mellow to anger and captured them all well.
On stage tonight was Gary Morissette on vocals and guitar, Tyrone Buccione on guitar, Patrick Wilken on bass, Dan Harden on drums and backup vocals, and Peter Fox on guitar. Charlie McKittrick was in the audience with us last night and although he was involved on the record he was not on stage (which is good since it was miniscule). Hopefully we will see him on stage at the bands next gig as his energy would be perfect fit.
We applaud Morissette for having the balls to create a lengthy complex piece in this day and age where attention span is limited to 140 characters and vocals auto-tuned by machines. The Devil’s Tower is a modern masterpiece and watching its debut showing live was a treat. This is how the bars of Toronto used to sound in the 70’s full of long-haired rockers and clouds of smoke floating on the roof of the venues.
The performance at the Paddock was an emotional ride which took us through the various movements of the composition with surgical precision. Harden’s drumming was Grohl-ish in its intensity. The bass was thunderous as we have come to expect from Wilken. The three guitars of Buccione, Fox, and Morrisette were masterfully interwoven with each other as the room was fueled by a barrage of riffs. I can not get over how marvelous the riffs were and how they brought the classic sound of the 70’s to modern times in a manner that has rarely ever been accomplished.
I was blown away by this show and think it deserves a large stage with a much better sound system in the venue. It deserves fog machines, strong stage lights, floating objects in the sky and lots of lasers. It deserves an audience of many thousands and a full tour! However it all has to begin somewhere and we were there for the premiere of The Devil’s Tower for what was (by far) the best rock we have heard in a bar this year.
Conclusion: This gig was a surreal voyage into Rock and Roll – everyone that witnessed this show will be talking about it for a very long time. The best part was seeing the smiles on faces of the musicians. They clearly loved performing this piece.
A best of T-Mak World winner!
