Metz
Metz (Sub Pop)
Reviewed by Michael Toland, Fri., March 15, 2013
Metz
(Sub Pop)"Metz" may call up images of a nebbish accountant feverishly crunching numbers on an ancient desktop (it's actually the name of a French city), but the Vancouver trio bearing this unassuming sobriquet is more likely to throw the computer out the window and kick the desk over. It's a simple sell: Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies, and Chris Slorach come up with a dissonant but catchy riff, add a couple of clashing chords, and give it all a frenzied beating for two to three minutes. The bug-eyed "Wasted," "Get Off," and "Knife in the Water" leave bruises and broken furniture in their wake; the glitchy art dump "Nausea" provides a brief but unsettling throat-clearing. Like a sexually frustrated Public Image Ltd or Mission of Burma without the patience for "art," Metz locates a bittersweet spot between post-punk calculation and garage-rock urgency. (10:30pm, Bar 96)