Hail The Villain, Threat Signal @ The Mansion Night Club

Hail The Villain@ The Mansion Night Club
Originally uploaded by vasquezr

Hail The Villain@ The Mansion Night Club
Originally uploaded by vasquezr

Hard rock was brought back to Barrie with the arrival of Hail the Villain.
The Oshawa quartet consisting of Bryan Crouch on vocals, Joseph Stamp guitar, Chad Taylor bass and Drew Dockrill drums grab you by the throat with their raw energy and power and never let go. Although the band has made it to Barrie on a few occasions I had not yet had the pleasure of catching their show. Having listened to songs from their hard hitting album Population:Declining I knew this was a band I could not miss any longer. The album is really good and the live show was just as good. A really good performance, these guys are not to be missed.

Threat Signal
Also on the bill that night were the quintet rockers from Hamilton Threat Signal. They describe themselves to be Melodic Trash Metal and proved to be a lot of fun and quite entertaining. These guys make live music photography a lot of fun, good poses and lots of flying hair. Overall a lot of fun to watch.

Threat Signal @ The Mansion Night Club
Originally uploaded by vasquezr


Threat Signal @ The Mansion Night Club
Originally uploaded by vasquezr

It was nice to see hard rock/metal come back to Barrie.

Nu Music Night: Mobile @ The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern

Mobile @ The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern
Originally uploaded by vasquezr


Mobile @ The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern
Originally uploaded by vasquezr

A great night of music. Nu Music Night featured USS, Mobile and The Waking Eyes. Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch The Waking eyes this time around, but I had seen them in Barrie a few weeks ago and at the Virgin Festival this year. I was however very pleased to be able to see my first ever Mobile set. I've liked these guys for quite some time now and was quite excited to see them live. Mobile did not disappoint. The band played favourites like Montreal Calling, Out of My Head and the latest single The Killer. Although suffering from the flu Mat Joly did well on vocals. Watching him move around the stage I was reminded of a young Bono circa the Boy to War days. Really good set. I'm glad I finally caught their live show.

The Midway State @ Tattoo Rock Parlour

The Midway State @ Tattoo Rock Parlour
Originally uploaded by vasquezr

I had been wanting to catch The Midway State since early summer. I had the opportunity to see them play at The Virgin Festival this year and was really impressed so when I found out they were playing @ the Tattoo Rock Parlour in Toronto I made sure to be there. The Midway State are a foursome consisting of, Nathan Ferraro (vocals/piano), Daenen Bramberger (drums) both from ski country Ontario, and Mike Wise (guitar), Mike Kirsh (bass) both from the GTA. The group has been experiencing success with their single "Never Again" from the album Holes released early this year. They started off with Fireflies for the eager Tattoo crowd and played through a few other songs from their album, "Unaware", "Change For You", "Can't Stop Waking Up To You" and others. Being from the Barrie area and spending quite a bit of time in ski country over the last few years I can't help but hear those references in their music about snow coming down and puffy white coats. Although their sound is dominated by Nathan's vocals and piano band mate Mike Wise showed off some skills during the band's cover of No Doubt's "Don't Speak" to the pleasure of their fans.

Sam Roberts Band @ The Danforth Music Hall

Sam Roberts Band @ The Danforth Music Hall
Originally uploaded by vasquezr

The Sam Roberts Band took Toronto by storm playing four nights out of five at the Danforth Music Hall. I had the pleasure of being there for two of the four nights. The first night was mainly photography as I did not have much time to stick around to see much more of the show. However I was lucky enough to catch the whole show on Saturday ( the last night of the stint ).

I had seen the band earlier this year @ Bala and have to say I found these shows to have a lot heavier sound and feel to them. The band powered through the set which included the title track to their latest album Love At The End Of The World, With A Bullet, and the bilingual No Sleep. They made sure to play crowd favourites Hard Road, Where Have All the Good People Gone? Don't Walk away Eileen, Bridge To Nowhere and Them Kids. However, the big highlights of the show were the saxophone assisted Brother Down and the full out rock blitz Mind Flood.

The Sam Roberts Band came to show Toronto what Rock n Roll is all about ... now if only we knew how to dance.

The Trews @ The Mansion Night Club, Barrie, ON

The Trews @ The Mansion Night Club
Originally uploaded by vasquezr

The Trews will be playing a couple of acoustic shows in Japan this week. As a result the people of Barrie were treated to a special warm up acoustic show. The house was packed which was quite nice to see as it was the first time I've ever seen it that full since the renovations. The anticipation was met by a solid intimate set by the east coasters. These guys always put on a great show and the acoustic version was no different. Even acoustically they were able to rock out to crowd favourites like So She's Leaving and Not Ready to Go. Other special highlight were the renditions of the very popular Man of Two Minds and Ishmael & Maggie. Overall a great treat for Barrie.