The week of Feb. 27th - Mar. 4th was Canadian Music Week in Toronto with many local labels and management groups putting together showcases for their talent roster. I got a chance to catch the Metal Queen Management showcase at The Vatikan, a cool "underground" nightclub in the Queen St W district. The show featured Warmachine, Shatterpoint and Penetrator with Canadian technical death metal giants Cryptopsy headlining the evening. I recently reviewed the latest releases by Warmachine, Shatterpoint and Penetrator so it was a chance for me to see all of these bands together. I had never seen Cryptopsy and was really looking forward to seeing their brand of very technical death metal and to see myself just how wild a drummer Flo Mounier really is!! The first 100 people were given sampler CDs from Metal Queen Management and Bloodbucket Productions. MC for the evening was Dave Blezard, the morning man from Z103.5 FM which surprisingly is a top 40 hit radio station. But as Dave said, "Just because you work at McDonald's doesn't mean you have to eat Big Macs all the time!" He's a big supporter of heavy metal in and around the Toronto area. Between bands, the tunes were provided by Miss Barbra Fisch from Satan Takes A Holiday at CKLN 88.1 FM radio. She played a great mix of metal and surprised me with a couple of classics by bands like Sacrifice and Exciter, two legendary Canadian metal bands.

Warmachine was up first and due to P.A. problems, we were treated to pretty much the band's stage sound with only Joe DiTaranto's voice coming through the P.A. The P.A. was working but was not very loud. Regardless, being the troopers that they are, ploughed through their 40 minute set anyway with tracks from their recently released debut album The Beginning Of The End. They played their more heavier material in "keeping with the theme of the night" i.e. a Cryptopsy concert with a set list that included tracks like Empty, The Beginning Of The End, Forgotten Demise (one of my favs) and Eye For An Eye to name a few. They were tight and put on a solid show for a very appreciative (but somewhat subdued) crowd. It's too bad about the P.A. problems but fortunately for Shatterpoint, the next band, the P.A. mix was great. Shatterpoint put on a great energetic performance playing pretty much all of their 6 song demo Consequences as well as a couple of new ones from their forthcoming debut release Dead Precedence. I especially liked Pleasure The Pain, Ended By Silence and Consequences. Their infectious blend of thrash metal, hard core and traditional heavy metal was a big hit with the crowd but it took front man Shane Drake to demand "Let's get a pit started" before the crowd really came to life. He's a big and imposing individual and if he points at you and demands in his demonic growl to "get a pit started"....you'd better get a pit started!!

Next up was Penetrator, another Toronto metal act that specializes in the more traditional Judas Priest/ Saxon brand of heavy metal with their front man Maxel Black's reddish blond locks and stage presence giving him a David Coverdale like persona. Guitarist Bess Ross sure grins and smiles a lot while he's playing and he looks like he has the time of his life while he's onstage. Their brand of metal falls in line very much with the Painkiller era of Judas Priest especially with their set finisher Penetrator. They also played other tracks from their debut such as Unleash The Fury, Adulteress, Wheels Of Justice and Templars Of Hate. They also played a couple of new tracks from their forthcoming album entitled Voo Doom. I really liked their set and they played very well and very tight however I got the feeling that the crowd was somewhat indifferent to their brand of metal. Seeing that this was a more harder edged and extreme metal show, they were a bit out of place and unfortunately a little under appreciated by the near capacity crowd.

By the time Cryptopsy hit the stage just after midnight, you couldn't move in the place. The P.A. problems started again midway through their set with a couple of songs being nothing more than the stage sound. Finally, the amp clipping problems or whatever the problems were seemed to get fixed and we were treated to some of the finest technical death metal you could ever hear. Drummer Flo Mounier's drum kit is out of this world. There's cross beams and trusses with stuff hanging everywhere. Just watching him play is a treat unto itself as his hands and feet never seem to stop. No wonder he's widely regarded as one of the best metal drummers around right now. I'll admit to not being too familiar with Cryptopsy before the show and death metal is not normally my thing but their sound is huge, aggressive and ominous with Lord Worm's howls, growls and screeches giving Cryptopsy a very scary, brutal and very "mechanical" sound. They were amazingly tight for their brand of very technical death metal and one of the highlights had to be the track Abigor from their Blasphemy Made Flesh album. Even if you are not a fan of this type of metal, you can't help but be impressed with just how good they are at what they do.

Even though It was a long drive for me to get there, it was a great evening of all original metal music and was well worth it. The metal scene in the Toronto area is alive and well even though it seems to be still largely underground. Metal Queen Management has a great mix of solid metal bands on their roster and as far as Warmachine, Shatterpoint and Penetrator are concerned, all three have recently signed label deals and are very capable of headlining their own shows. If you think that heavy metal is dead around the Toronto area, you just don't know where to find it!! With local bands like these and the fact that The Opera House is starting to bring in more international metal heavyweights, things are looking better and better for the Toronto metal scene.

Many thanks to Betty (The Metal Queen) and her management group for putting on the show and for her continued support of metal in and around the Toronto area. It was a great night with 4 great bands.