Live Show Review: Poil Ueda and John Zorn at the FIMAV

FIMAV, photo by Martin Morissette

It is well known that I seldom venture out of the comforts of my abode to seek the fellowship of likeminded individuals in a live music ritual. However, upon seeing the delightful programme that the FIMAV (the French acronym for Victoriaville’s International Contemporary Music Festival) had to offer this year, I was tempted—and later fulfilled these temptations—to journey beyond the borders of my realm and into the unknown. You have to hand it to the organizers of this festival for the awe-striking programme: Poil Ueda (opening the festivities), Ikue Mori, Zoh Amba, Fred Frith, Guy… Read more

Review: Scorched Moon – Obsidia

The Music

The Words

Scorched Moon is a band featuring my buddy Trapper Lanthier (the band’s lead guitarist and one of the main songwriters), who actually attributes his love of Metal, to me! for introducing him to Blind Guardian through an anime music video I made back in 2003. Trapper has shown me some demos of his music over the past few years, which always impressed me, but this debut album, Obsidia, is on another level!

Obsidia is a sci-fi concept album, something that’s right up my alley. The lyrics and tone fit the concept … Read more

Matt versus Dragoncorpse: The Drakketh Saga Review

From premise to name, Dragoncorpse is not a band that exactly begs to be taken seriously. The elevator pitch of “power deathcore” gives you an honest and clear idea of what to expect: a gimmicky juxtaposition of two genres that are generally gimmicky to begin with. (Leading off the album with a guest appearance by a member of Brojob doesn’t help matters.) They’ve taken the “Dragon-” prefix that is necessarily required to indicate your power metal status. My friends and I half-started a joke band called Dragondragon more than a decade ago mocking this very phenomenon. Toss on “-corpse” to … Read more

Daniel’s Top 31 Albums of 2021

Another year, another list of favourite albums released 3 months too late. At least I’m consistent in my poor timing nowadays, I suppose.

Either way, 2021 was a fun year for my music browsing. A good amount of healthy variety throughout, even if there wasn’t too much that truly astounded me. But yeah, I’m hoping this list will have a little something for all sorts, even if my tastes fell in a rather particular direction this year. (Perhaps someone will notice.) Regardless, I’ve spent more than enough time typing this out already, so with no more fuss to be had, … Read more

Plebeian Grandstand – Rien ne suffit

Every year, there are releases that solidify the following statement: “This has been a great year for music.” Rien ne suffit is an example of this. I co-host a radio show at my local university called The Funeral Directory. It’s a metal specialty show on Monday nights. We do it for the love of aggressive music, and partially because we don’t trust anyone else to create the playlists. If you’re like me, you listen to a lot of metal, and perhaps you wrongly assume that certain bands are household names at this point. “Everyone knows Imperial Triumphant”, you might … Read more