Metz @ Crescent Ballroom

The best way to encapsulate the sound of the early-'80s punk squalor collected on legendary Chicago indie label Touch and Go is with a lot of Home Depot imagery: buzzsaw guitars, hammering drums, sandpaper shrieks. Toronto post-hardcore contractors Metz would have been right at home there. Metz's self-titled full-length channels...

By Chase Kamp

April 25, 2013

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The best way to encapsulate the sound of the early-'80s punk squalor collected on legendary Chicago indie label Touch and Go is with a lot of Home Depot imagery: buzzsaw guitars, hammering drums, sandpaper shrieks. Toronto post-hardcore contractors Metz would have been right at home there. Metz's self-titled full-length channels the relentlessly overdriven guitar wall of The Jesus Lizard and Repeater-era Fugazi, propelled by drummer Hayden Menzies' seismic wallops. Singer Alex Edkins even shares both a likeness and a throat-shredding vocal style with Steve Albini, whose corrosive acts like Big Black and Shallac were T&G staples. Another '80s punk hub, longtime indie juggernaut Sub Pop, has always held open spots in its corral for acquired tastes like Wolf Eyes and Comets on Fire, even as the label rode the meteoric success of high-brow pop like The Shins and Beach House. So it wasn't too surprising, then, when Sub Pop snatched up this trio. With the steady eye of a craftsman, Metz pinpoints a cathartically furious corner of American punk.

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