The biggest lie about punk rock is that anyone can do it. Sure, anyone can do crap punk rock, but there is a fine to art to taking a music fueled by destructive impulses and building it to last. Toronto power trio Metz played their first show in late 2007, and since then, they've effectively applied Malcolm Gladwell's theory about the Beatles-- i.e., that it takes a good 10,000 hours of practice to become them-- to a subgenre not exactly known for its studiousness: post-hardcore sludge-punk. That five-year gap between their live and recorded debuts is not a product of laziness, but rather precision; while Metz quickly established themselves as the most brutalizing band in the city, the process of translating that essence into a record that would sound every bit as devastating and disorienting outside the confines of a circle pit was more protracted and deliberate. After a couple of small-run 7"'s, and a series of sessions helmed by producers including Owen Pallett/Dusted associate Leon Taheny, Crystal Castles engineer Alex Bonenfant, and Graham Walsh of Holy Fuck, they've distilled their set-list standards into 29 minutes of pure but artfully rendered chaos.
From Cloud Nothings' In Utero'd pop-punk to Japandroids' Superchunk-gone-Springsteen heroics to the Men's My Bloody Dinosaur overdrive, 2012 has seen no lack of artists revamping 1990s-vintage indie rock with a more anthemic accessibility and better mastering jobs. Metz pull off the same trick, but work with more angular, insoluble materials: namely, the muscular menace of the Jesus Lizard and the relentless, power-drill discord of Drive Like Jehu. Metz songs tend to start with an isolated element-- Hayden Menzies' thundering, hammer-of-the-gods drum salvos, Alex Edkins' solitary guitar screech-- that immediately triggers a ticking time-bomb countdown for the moment when the band erupts in unison. You can see the storm coming from a mile atway, and yet, when Menzies, Edkins, and bassist Chris Slorach launch into the merciless, firestorm battering of "Negative Space" or the wrecking-ball swing of "Knife in the Water", it still startles like a sneak attack.
But while it ably captures the band's ferocity, Metz is less a recreation of the band's live shows than a surveillance-video document of it, one that's been edited and manipulated to maximize dynamic impact. There's a surface graininess that amplifies the corrosive qualities of the band's sound and the strep-throat rawness of Edkins' voice, but also serves to accentuate some of the more surprising elements in the mix-- like the ascendant "ahhhhh" harmonies that provide a two-second respite from the village-pillaging assault of "Headache". The title of that song and others like "Rats", "Nausea", and "Sad Pricks" provide a handy summation of Edkins' bleak lyrical concerns, but that misanthropy never weighs the album down. Instead, like a pre-fame Kurt Cobain, Edkins channels his anxieties into manic release with a certain insolent swagger: In "Wasted", you get a glimpse of what Nirvana would've sounded like had they recorded their follow-up to Bleach for Touch and Go instead of Geffen.
Though unafraid to temper their inherent ugliness with piano taps and tambourine shakes, Metz stop short of embracing traditional pop-song melody. But they do understand pop-song economy, carefully arranging their riffs, rhythms, and screams in two-to-three-minute bursts that still feel immediate and catchy in the absence of proper sing-along hooks. Live, "Wet Blanket"'s psych-damaged fuzz-bass breakdown often gets stretched out, "You Made Me Realise"-style; on record, it emerges as a tightly wound beast, with a white-knuckled finale that craftily blurs the line between the band's natural, primal energy and studio-tweaked trickery. Recent history is rife with home-recording prodigies who get thrust onto the stage before learning how to perform, or promising live acts who rush-release their albums so that they have something to sell at the merch table, or at least a Soundcloud link to pimp. But while evidence suggests great concerts and great records are becoming mutually exclusive ideals for aspiring artists, Metz prove that, with a little patience, you can still have it both ways.
