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Excalibur York University's
Newspaper
"Salvation Through `Balls-Out Rawk' "
by Solomon Feldman
As Neil Young puts it: "It's better to burn out than to fade away." Judging
from the energy Cyanide Kiss displayed at the Emergenza festival at The
Reverb on May 14, it's safe to say that the time when we see them either
burn out or fade away is still pretty far from sight.
The majority of Emergenza's semifinalists (the winners move on to The
Opera House for the finals) were heavy on the punk rock. Eighty8, a four-piece
speed-punk band featuring a surprisingly cocky and charismatic lead singer,
was revealed to be the fan favourite, effectively veering from one song
to the next with a professionalism that belied their experience. (Metalheads
Forgery, however, took first while Eighty8 settled for runner-up.) The
softer sounds of bluesy folk rockers QR5 didn't mesh well with the blisteringly
fast tempo of the evening's offerings. They even garnered some boos from
impatient fans who looked like they were suffering from withdrawal and
needed a surge of adrenaline the way a junky needs his hit of good ol'
Charlie. But between that drastic shift in momentum came a salvation of
sorts, in the form of Cyanide Kiss.
The Hamilton native alt-rockers consisting of brothers Rob and Jeff McKenna
and brothers Adam and Matt Kras filled in the sketchy spaces and capped
off the evening quite nicely. The boys of Cyanide Kiss list early '90s
alt pioneers Smashing Pumpkins and Joy Division as their prime influences,
as well as more recent bands like the demure A Perfect Circle, and it
certainly showed on stage. Their moody, emotionally driven songwriting,
screeching guitar riffs and lead singer-guitarist Rob McKenna's Billy
Corgan-is-alive-and-well caterwaul felt like '90s rock is making a comeback.
As the band tore into their catalogue - a mixture of songs from their
first album, Here, as well as some new material from their most recent
recording Halcyon Daze- the effect was surprisingly refreshing, yet not
painfully anachronistic or hopelessly nostalgic as one might expect. Music
had some great moments back in the neo-grunge days, but they shouldn't
be taken for granted. Cyanide Kiss provided a sharp reminder that it was
Gen-X that rejuvenated a once-middling commercial genre with its brand
of youthful angst.
Their latest album is still in the recording process, but the band is already noticing a difference in their sound. "Our first CD was pretty well-received," notes Adam. "People were comparing it to Nirvana's sound - lots of dirty guitars and bass, and heavy effects. For our second album, we wanted to go in another direction with more of a dark sound, with not as many effects ... [but] with more attention placed on atmospherics." Listening to Cyanide Kiss do the ‘balls-out rawk' thing live, one can't help but imagine a young Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan standing out in a sold-out Pixies or Cure concert, staring at the stage in a state of wide-eyed euphoria and thinking two things to himself:
1) How fucking awesome is this? and
2) That's gonna be me someday.
The burning question these days is whether that sentiment still holds true - whether music still has the power to create another renaissance like we had in the early '90s, or if that was a product of a golden era whose time has come and gone. "Music is cyclical," says Adam. "I think it's difficult ... it's hard to come up with something completely original at this point in time. There are only so many times you can keep returning to the same genre before it starts to wear out. You can always come back to it, though. Even with bands like The Killers that goes back to the '70s era new-wave. That's popular now." Does Cyanide Kiss have any advice for young fans? "Keep on keepin' on," Adam says, after a moment. "You can use that as a quote!" Done and done.
