Artist: METZ

Title: METZ

Record Label: Sub Pop

Rating: 7.5

METZ hate your ear drums. It’s nothing personal, they just want to pummel your tympanic membrane until you are soothed by the sound of tinnitus reverting around your cochlea. The three piece from Toronto are set to unleash a debut album that snarls with the aggression of punk and the unhinged appeal of grunge. When bandmates Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies and Chris Sloarch set up shop in an isolated barn the primary purpose of these sessions was to capture the sheer force of their live show. Through waves of feedback and discordant textures the trio have manifested an album that is the audio equivalent to circle pits, sweaty club shoes and sticky floors.

As soon as you glance at the track listing you should know what you are getting yourself into, titles like ‘Headache’, ‘Nausea’ and ‘Wasted’ speak for themselves…it’s a smooth jazz album right?! As brutal as the band’s self titled assault is, underneath all the chaos there are still tunes waiting to be discovered. The album isn’t noise for the sake of noise. Admittedly the album does feel like a Japanese game show at times, tortuously good fun, but not something you would want to put yourself through on a regular basis.

Coming across like a really pissed off version of The Cribs, METZ are relentless. Their debut rarely pauses for breath, with one sprawling tsunami of noise smashing into the next. ‘Sad Prick’ has a drum beat that sounds like a Tyrannous Rex stomping out a fire, while ‘Knife in the Water’ is an intense riff-rama to the sound of chainsaw-esque fretwork. ‘The Mule’ sees METZ make a racket like they are tuning a radio with an electric whisk until the song dissolves into the closest thing to a chorus on the album, before an maniacal scream brings the anarchy back to it’s natural equilibrium.

METZ; a band keeping Otolaryngologists (ear doctors to the layman) in business since 2008.

Words and Thoughts of Adam Williams