The Black Market: Subtle as a brick

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They even have a list of personally approved charities and social and environmental welfare organsiations listed on the website, including Greenpeace, Amnesty International and WSPA. Toby tells us he has worked for all these organisations and sussed out who's worth supporting.

The songs on The Black Market's album Subtle As a Brick follow a time-honoured tradition of punk, ska and reggae - they confront various issues and voice an opinion. This is reinforced by the stabbing guitars of Toby Market and Bruce Wilkie who both sing with the obligatory bad enunciation and choruses of "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!". Busy snare work and bolshy bass fulfill your expectations of a band like this.
In 2003, The Black Market entered the Queensland leg of the Triple J Unearthed competition. Since then, they've thrown themselves into the Queensland music scene, busily building a profile and picking up some good supports, including joining the dots on the Queensland section of the Horrorpops recent Australian tour.
From making noise and annoying neighbours with other people's songs in a tool shed in "Brisvegas" to writing their own tunes, recording an album, the boys have been busy. They've also set up a website and free zine BlackList (check out their site, it very specifically says send in your order and NO MONEY - kids, I can hear the crinkle of your waxy ears pricking up). They've started a veritable underground enterprise: their own music label, Black Market Records, records local bands on "more of an understanding than a contract" (as Toby said in one Brisbane interview); their production company Too the Show Productions organises tours for interstate bands; their merchandise arm Black Market Merch provides a platform for numerous bands to advertise and sell their stuff to the fans.
So they're young, wrinkle their noses at ignorance, play music your parents… might like actually, considering it's inspired by the likes of Bob Marley, The Clash and Bo Diddley …will at least ask you about because parents are all PC and aware these days. And though they're all scungey-looking and dirty-haired you can tell your parents that they're also highly entrepreneurial but in a kicking against the schmicks, socially aware kind of a way.
They are committed to producing two 10-song full-length albums every year. And now, hot on the heels of the Subtle As a Brick release in July, they launched the single Walls Go Up, Walls Come Down in October for the new album that they are currently working on and aiming to have out by late this year or possibly early next year. They're a group with an agenda, and as the web blurb says, they're intent on making music with some meaning. They are "a band focused on real life, political issues and the real purpose of music - social change."
Try Everything opens with a slow, wide gait that feels like they're circling you, before hitting the fast-paced ska mm-ka mm-ka, set by Matt Smith on drums, fidgetting back through slower time signatures and features a twitchy little trebley bass solo from Easy Steve Reed.
Breakout has some bumblebee guitar and embellished hits which stagger into walls like Gary Oldman's character in Meantime with gobs and foamy splashes onto the pavement.
Short and Sweet (In the End) is a swinging punk ska number with a vocal that almost lilts up and down the scale "if the bridges burn and the buildings fall" and some boys making noise like cowboys and indians wh-wh-wh-wh-whoos.
It's all very much slamming ideas at you in fast neat packages with plenty of punch and all the hallmarks of their influences well understood musically. A prickly little guitar solo that rolls through the middle 8, basslines walking up and down the songs, slap-you-about drumming and rah rah rah vocals.
Development is, as the name suggests a commentary on the constant development that plagues our cities, laying waste to old buildings in the concrete race upwards and the money belt race outwards.
"Who's gonna come and save our town?" yells the chorus of the chorus.

I hear a falling and it's something calling,
Brisbane calling 'cause it's fallin' right now.
I see their faces and there's nothing dawning,
nothing dawning and the cost is this town.

A skipping fuzz guitar, running 50s basslines, and the ceaseless drums which slam and roll the chorus home with a wall of thick chord changes.
Savage Land even has a flavour of The New York Dolls with the happy to solo guitar swankily distorted and the rambunctious spitting vocals which are somewhat reminiscent of David Johanson's tonality. "There's too much evil in this land," bellows the bellacose gravelly boys with all the vigour of a toddler screaming for lollies with one of those disarmingly deep croaky bawls.
As the band states, they are inspired by a collection of complimentary genres which are familiar and with a forceful sound that drives home political passion, though I was happy to have the lyric sheet handy, to decipher some of the words lost in all the spit and pistol-waggling.
They take on a bunch of issues that even sunny Brisbane isn't free from like drug use and homelessness in Cold and Dark, the rights of Indigenous Australians in So Cold, and, in Devils In the Detail, the exploitative financial margins between rich and poor, "so think of people other than you/ or maybe you like to walk in their shoes." (Did you remember?)
It's easy to be cynical about a bunch of kids taking on a new headline for each song, but really it's all in the spirit of bands like The Clash "phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust" and all that scathing guff, though these boys haven't quite gotten the sting in their tales yet that Joe Strummer did. But I'd rather hear political songs sung in an invigorating line-up like The Black Market than some sap sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar bemoaning injustice through wafts of patchouli and yesterdays chunky vegetable curry sweating out. Maybe that's just me.
Basically these guys have put politics and not-for-profit up there at the forefront of their musical ambitions. Fortunately the music is, though highly familiar, a good assimilation of their influences and loud, punchy and proficient. They have set themselves the admirable but tough task of keeping up with their own expectations and measuring up to their own professions of thoughtfulness and political involvement. It's an exhausting thing to do comprehensively, and they are saturating themselves in every possible medium after jumping the demanding hurdle of the first album, covering all ground in full reggae-lia and taking it all on themselves, rather than signing a contract and being swallowed up by a bigger corporation. The thing about all this is (God save Australia's suspicious collective mind!) that we the people are naturally skeptical of this kind of thing and will keep questioning and pulling them into check with a critical measuring stick. So, you've got your work cut out for you boys! But The Black Market seem to be, like their music, full force.

You can read an interview with Toby Market here.

Don't forget to enter the competition for some Black Market merchandise

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Strapping Lad rocks oot!

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Devin Townsend, the man behind the origins of SYL, started the project after finishing up his vocal duties with legendary guitarist Steve Vai (Vai's Sex & Religion album, and ensuing tour). Townsend was being marketed as a sex symbol by the label. He stumbled out of the Big Music Business, disillusioned and pissed off. His need to create something very extreme and heavy as an outlet for his feelings (which he has admitted he has difficulty expressing; Townsend also suffers from bipolar disorder, which he claims is evident in the variety of projects he undertakes) resulted in Strapping Young Lad.

After creating a great deal of music he went to a few labels and eventually released the material in 1995 as the album Heavy As a Really Heavy Thing on Century Media, achieving great, if underground, success. Heavy was hailed as a savior of aggressive music for that time and is still a fan favorite. Following such an album wouldn't prove easy but City (recorded at Steve Vai's house) was released in 1997 with a newly solidified lineup including Gene "The Atomic Clock" Hoglan on drums, Byron Stroud (also of popular industrial metal act Fear Factory ) on bass and Jed Simon on guitar to unprecedented acclaim. With this giant of an album, Devin perfected his wall-of-sound production style and showed what he was capable of. Shortly after its release, Townsend announced that Strapping Young Lad was basically finished.

After releasing a solo album (Infinity), and a self-imposed stay at a mental institution, Townsend later prepared new material for a SYL album that ended up being released in 2000, however, as his solo album Physicist. Strapping Young Lad was reactivated by the events of September 11, which motivated the band to create a new album. Their eponymous release of 2003 was a much drier, harsher experience than the albums that came before with very honest, aggressive lyrics which subsequently divided fans of the band. SYL's sound can best be described as all the heaviest things you can imagine falling on you at once...with lots of low end. This brings us to the live DVD.

Filmed in 2003 and released late last year, the title is a play on their Canadian origins and tells you from the get-go that SYL do things very tongue-in-cheek. With a reputation for a sense of humour embedded in the music he plays, Devin Townsend wastes no time getting into his very engaging metal frontman role. Gene Hoglan, a 150 kg mountain of a man behind his double bass drum kit, proves his worth as a legend in the extreme thrash drumming world with a plethora of lightning fast drumming and double kicks. Byron plays the solid role, keeping the rhythm section with Gene, while Jed is a joking metal kid with a stupidly fast right hand.

Kicking things off with Consequence (from the album Strapping Young Lad) the whole band pummels away so tightly that you'd swear it was a studio recording. Devin has a very dynamic voice, moving from guttural screams to peaking falsettos in the blink of an eye. He keeps the crowd interested with amusing between- song banter.

Galloping straight into Relentless the band hits their stride and the whole crowd is really getting into it. A few songs in, Townsend dons a novelty oversized cowboy hat grabbed from an audience member and proceeds to headbang to great effect.

More banter ("This next song is about my favourite subject when I was in school...social studies...for that was the subject that was...AFTERMATH!") and introductions for the band lead into the insanity of Oh My Fucking God which begins with a startling display of double-kicking from Gene.

The obligatory encore is unexpected; Devin puts out a request for anyone who knows the chorus to Far Beyond Metal to come up the front and sing it. The call is answered by Drew, a fan who sports an impressive beard (and a mean unintentional vibrato, we subsequently discover).The song is played, Drew is shredding air guitar and all is going well until he begins his crooning which closely resembles a cat dying, much to the amusement of the band who grin largely for the rest of the song. It's something you can't help but laugh at.

The editing across the duration of the DVD is swift but leaves sufficient cues to understand what's going on. Making great use of simultaneous multiple angles, PIP (picture-in-picture) editing gives you a look simultaneously the crowd and each member of the band, almost resembling a multi-paneled comic book. The video is in focus (not always the case with live footage) and the colours are brilliant; a great looking DVD to be sure. The sound is mixed very well, however Devin could have spent a little more time and done a 5.1 mix - while the stereo mix is great, it would be that much bigger in surround. A minor gripe though, as the sound quality is excellent and won't disappoint. As far as bonus features go, we're treated to both Detox (from City) and Relentless (from SYL) promo videos, the latter of which is incredibly funny and features a sort of skull smashing terminator who pops up in major accents of the music. Also included is an "interview with the band" featurette that provides a good glimpse into the ideas behind SYL, and a crew interviews featurette which features chats with tour drivers, stage managers and suchlike (it's more interesting than it sounds, people) about life on the road with SYL.

Why I am I telling you all this, when we all know that fans of the band will watch it regardless of the quality, and those who don't know the band will be going "Huh?"?
Because this is one of the very few heavy bands which, firstly, should be heard by all who love and appreciate the more intelligent and humorous end of the metal genre and, secondly, may provide enough visual and musical interest for those previously uninterested in the genre to make it worth checking out.
All in all a great package and a superb lead-in for the latest album, Alien, (to be reviewed soon - watch this space).

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