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"Hamilton Music Notes"
by Ric Taylor
Dundas’ Cyanide Kiss have taken the release of their latest CD one step
further. Music fans usually relish obscure and pre–fame audio and video
bootlegs of their faves, so why shouldn’t every band embrace the new technology
to give the fans what they want even if they’re not quite superstars?
Cyanide Kiss have taken some lighthearted home movies and released a companion
DVD for their new CD Here. “We’re not really interested in the marketing
side of it,” explains bassist Adam Kras. “It’s great if it can work that
way but we were just having fun making it. We’d invite our friends over
to watch it after we filmed things and we thought maybe fans would like
to take it home. So we put it all together for the fans.”
Brothers Rob and Jeff McKenna, have been musically inclined since their
high school days but have only recently hooked up with Matt and Adam Kras
(of no relation) to flesh out the current outfit.
After two homemade demos they tapped the talents of Robin Aube to create
their debut studio album, Here. Dramatic and somber, the disc is fraught
with guitar–heavy tracks with a decidedly morose lyrical bent that conjures
up music from another era.
“Rob and Matt have been huge fans of Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana for
a long time but it’s not a conscious [influence] in developing the songs,”
comments Kras. “When we jam, we play what we feel, what we like and what
sounds good to us and however other people interpret that, so be it.
And the Here DVD ends up being a series of vignettes encompassing interviews, rehearsals, live gigs and action drama in the form of a martial arts docudrama entitled The Eternal Struggle Within (falling somewhere between Spinal Tap and Kill Bill).
The disc captures a band that is far from approaching the infinite sadness. For diehard fans, this kind of material is sheer brilliance, even offering a live performance of the McKenna brothers ’high school days. Silly and irreverent, the DVD offers insight into a band driven to create art by their own standards.
“The DVD doesn’t say too much about the musical direction but it does show how much we enjoy making it,” muses Kras. “We are a relatively new band—we haven’t been together a year yet—but we’re trying to play as much as we can and get more people to hear us. Everything helps.”
“Commercial radio bands have found a formula and it works for them but every song sounds the same,” adds the bassist. “We are trying to have fun but that means doing things differently. Every time we play a show, we try to think how to make things different from our previous shows. We make it better so that we don’t play the same show twice. We get bored easily, so we like to keep it interesting for ourselves as well as an audience.”
