Featuring six rising heavy-hitters who know how to wield distortion, this year’s showcase includes Montreal’s new age punk rockers NOBRO, Calgary metal overlords WAKE, Indigenous hardcore heavyweights Indian Giver, Toronto psych rock outfit Hot Garbage, Montreal art punks La Sécurité, and the notorious wild cards on any bill they play, Saskatoon’s mathy noise-rock delinquents Grimelda. 

Thanks to our sponsors Brixton, SaskMusic, Music Calgary, Alberta Music, Clubcard, and Take Aim Media

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The Montreal-based, Iggy Pop-approved punk outfit NOBRO dropped their debut LP Set Your Pussy Free on Dine Alone Records (Alexisonfire, The Dirty Nil, etc) in 2023 and we’ve been hooked ever since. One of RANGE Magazine’s Top 25 Albums of the Year, SYPF is a caustic, celebratory, glorious party-punk firework show. It’s a record about the ecstatic pursuit of personal escape and liberation even as the walls are closing in; a 21st century power-punk analog of Born To Run that rages against modern life’s restrictive pressures and dares them to a game of chicken. If a hurricane is bearing down on NOBRO, they’re spitting into it, arm-in-arm, with middle fingers raised.

— Read our review of NOBRO’s Set Your Pussy Free —

Calgary-based metal titans WAKE have never been a band interested in repeating themselves. This is abundantly apparent from their discography, having evolved with every release. 2020’s Devouring Ruin made this more clear than ever, hammering the point home with the Confluence EP in the same year, and now they return with Thought Form Descent, their most dynamic, diverse and emotional release to date. Forcing the listener to reconsider what ‘extreme’ means, WAKE’s new album runs the gamut from relentlessly heavy to exquisitely beautiful, often simultaneously. However, at the same time, they are lushly textured and densely layered, taking WAKE to a whole new level while offering more with every subsequent exposure and unfurling to show hidden depths. 

— Read our interview with Wake here — 

Indian Giver is an Indigenous hardcore band based in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. With a sound as urgent as the issues still facing indigenous communities, Indian Giver’s message is a straightforward one – reconciliation through reclamation, and they set out to reclaim the spaces of punk, hardcore, and metal which have largely been dominated by white artists and audiences for decades. 

With a name once considered a derogatory term, Indian Giver is holding a flame with clear instructions to reclaim all that has been lost or stolen by colonialism. 

Hot Garbage melts into a heavily volatile yet undeniably palatable amalgamation of sonic elements. Calling on the driving rhythms of dark post-punk and motorik krautrock, the Toronto-based outfit seamlessly work shining melodies and swirling textures into deliberate, brooding arrangements. Fans of Sonic Youth, Broadcast and 70s era Iggy Pop will no doubt find a familiar pull into their raw sound, which draws inspiration from a wide and eclectic range of musical genres and art forms. The quartet now returns with Precious Dream, a sprawling collection of songs written in isolation and brought together in studio in late 2022 with visionary producer Graham Walsh (METZ, Preoccupations, Holy Fuck, !!!) – out now via Mothland.

— Read our interview with Hot Garbage here — 

La Sécurité (Montréal/Tiohtià:ke) is a collective whose art punk is equal parts jumpy beats, off-kilter arrangements, and minimalistic melodic hooks. Run through an insomniac filter, it’s the result of excessive exposure to the city’s neon lights. The music is all about living dangerously, perfectly agreeable to being blasted onto dancefloors, while the lyrics share the ethos of the Riot Grrrl movement and celebrate benevolence, friends (mean and nice) and the autonomization of women. Their new album Stay Safe! (Mothland) is manic, yet surprisingly laid-back, and should no doubt strike a chord with fans of Le Tigre, Automatic, Wet Leg, Devo, E.S.G. or The B-52’s.

— Read our interview with La Sécurité here —

Grimelda is a really really good band who play songs that take rock and/or roll to uncharted depths. While their New Daft Punk EP (2021, Transistor 66) highlighted collaboration and genre-bending like the world had never seen, It’s So Feeling When You Rock (2023, Transistor 66) was a collection of absurd classics inspired by the need to claw your way through the dumpster fire in search of F-U-N. This year, they will elevate beyond earthly terms like “what a cool beat” and “great energy, man.” Instead, the Saskatoon art-damaged punk duo plans to present a No Rules effort by bringing numerous co-conspirators to the writing table. Wow! Just wow. Is this the future of music? Could these two skids from the Canadian prairies be transcending sound? Does this auditory enigma exist outside of our mortal plane? Or are we all simply regressing into hell?

— Read our interview with Grimelda here —