Burning Love, Crux of Aux smoke hardcore vets Coliseum at The Shop
Matt of Crux of Aux (ex-Cursed, Shallow North Dakota, Chore) - photo Ivy Lovell
Monday’s Coliseum show at west-end basement Parts and Labour was a purposeful lesson from the Kentucky hardcore vets we should appreciate our own damn scene.
Coliseum chose to end the night with a full run-through of their latest down-tempo, melodic, Baroness-esque effort House with a Curse (most pit action was for their older tracks), so they were essentially smoked by local opening acts - Burning Love, Crux of Aux and Purity Control.
Lullabye Arkestra's Justin Small helps Burning Love's Chris Colohan down the bar. - photo Ivy Lovell
The stellar lineup drew T.O. scene heavyweights including Metz, Lullabye Arkestra, Mutters and Molested Youth to check out the city’s best new space, Parts and Labour, a.k.a. The Shop, a basement (below a hip resto) for garage, punk and metal debauchery. The small space holds 200 people comfortably – perfect for an intimate show, made extra intimate with Burning Love frontman (ex-Cursed) Chris Colohan’s special trips into the crowd (see pic side) and a little hose-down from the friendly bar staff.
Frontman Matt Bourassa of thrash-core supergroup Crux of Aux (comprised of members of defunct Hamilton legends Cursed, Shallow North Dakota and Chore), spoke to us after their Unsane/Melvins/Slayer-influenced performance, which has changed over the years.
“I sing through an old DOD analog delay along with a digital delay/pitchshifter and sometimes use a sampler. Used to have a whole whack of shit, but trying to keep it simple give people something to look at instead of being in the corner crouched down like a creep.”
Despite playing gigs for a few years, they’ve never got around to recording much, as you can tell by the one song on myspace, but interest from Colohan might see an EP from the new line-up soon.
“We have had numerous lineup changes so demos sounded dated I guess. There used to be no vocals, and no bass player. I made noise with pedals and ran a speak and spell through them…it has progressed…i think we will be putting something out sooner than later… guess we need to get our shit together.” He says, adding most of the band are “oldtimers” and it’s hard to get away from their jobs to tour.
“It is harder to book work off now, everyone is busy and touring isn’t really a big deal anymore, however if the right opportunity arose we’d probably take it.”
You can catch Bourassa in his other projects, spastic noise punks Sailboats are White, working on their third full length, and a new lo-fi post-punk outfit (with members of Germans and Sebastian Grainger’s Mountains) called Rituals.
– marsha casselman
Burning Love-in - photo Ivy Lovell
Great shots.