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Sound Advice: Negative Space by Metz
Every Tuesday, Torontoist scours record store shelves in search of the city’s most notable new releases and brings you the best—or sometimes just the biggest—of what we’ve heard in Sound Advice.
Though often hailed as one of the loudest live bands in the city, Metz is also quickly becoming known as one of the best. With a just-completed trio of seven-inch singles, they’re also rapidly becoming the band that everyone is wishing would hurry up and make a full-length already.
The recently released “Negative Space” single wraps up the post-whatever band’s series with local cred-heavy label We Are Busy Bodies, and though it’s once again only two songs long, they’ve managed to already solidify their sludgy corner of the Toronto scene. Since the first single in January 2009 and the follow up that summer, with its killer hype-track-in-waiting, “Dry Up,” it’s been clear that Metz harbours love for some heavy, melodic, early 90s nu punk; think a messier version of (the already messy) Sub Pop–era Nirvana or Jesus Lizard’s chugging, noisy post-hardcore bottom. On the new single’s “Automat,” the trio (guitarist Alex Edkins, bassist Chris Slorach, and drummer Hayden Menzies) churns out some blotted, nuanced guitar work, smearing everything in spooky reverb, giving the otherwise hypnotic raucousness a ’70s new wave vibe.
Negative Space is limited to five hundred copies of marble-purple vinyl through the label (or, of course, as non-limited, non-marble purple downloads), which is worth grabbing not only for being a killer local punk release but just in case Metz end up taking the mythical Fucked Up route of multiple-single obscurity turned world-revered indie band.