Mistletone

Mistletone is amped to present the first ever Australian tour by stellar Toronto trio, METZ. Handpicked by METZ themselves, Sydney guests are 90s-nostalgic, cinematic punk rocker TV Colours and three-headed Melbourne punk/sludge/stoner/ hardcore/doom beast Batpiss, making the trip up the Hume to Goodgod on Wednesday, December 4. Batpiss are also main support for the Melbourne show at Howler on Thursday December 5, along with amped-up Melbourne quartet Deep Heat. And in Brisbane (just announced!), they’ll be joined by a super special surprise local guest. Killer lineups which perfectly set the scene for METZ’s visceral live show, as the Sub Pop shredders get set to pummel Australian audiences with all the raucously artful force at their disposal.

METZ AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES:

SYDNEY: WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 4 @ Goodgod Small Club with TV Colours + Batpiss. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix. Presented by FBi.
MELBOURNE: THURSDAY DECEMBER 5 @ Howler with Batpiss + Deep Heat. Tickets & info here. Presented by 3RRR.
BRISBANE: FRIDAY DECEMBER 6 @ Electric Playground with secret main support + The Mercy Beat. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix. Co-presented by The Fans Group.
PERTH: SATURDAY DECEMBER 7 @ Slanted & Enchanted. Tickets & info here. Presented by Life Is Noise.

Watch Metz perform “Can’t Understand” at Pitchfork Music Festival 2013:

Here’s a little get-to-know about METZ’s special guests in Sydney & Melbourne….

TV Colours (Sydney)

TV Colours is the solo project of Canberra-based artist Bobby Kill, who started releasing material in MP3 form on the Dream Damage website around 2009, culminating in a split 7 inch with fellow Canberra group Assassins 88. Purple Skies, Toxic River is TV Colours’ debut LP and took six years of false starts to finally get finished. Crawlspace described the LP as “genuinely beautiful more frequently than you’d think possible for a rough punk band from Canberra”.

Batpiss (Sydney + Melbourne)

Formed in Collingwood in 2011, Batpiss released their debut album Nuclear Winter early 2012. Playing their own mix of heavy sludgy punk hardcore over hundreds of gigs, they have built a solid fan base that knows that a Batpiss show is always loud, heavy and straight in your face. Since day one, it has been a non-stop gig orgy for Batpiss, supporting bands such as OFF!, The Bronx, Guitar Wolf, The Meanies, Blood Duster, Bits of Shit and Grong! Grong!.

Deep Heat (Melbourne)

Straddling the intersection of hypnotic garage, dreamy 1990s pop and Scandi-influenced indie punk, Deep Heat incorporates tessellating, chorus-drenched guitar hooks and layered triple vocals, underpinned by buzzy and energetic percussion/bass. With a pedigree that includes Teen Archer and The Diamond Sea, Deep Heat trade the energy and melody of early Wipers with the angsty ardour of mid-’90s to create an urgent wiring of raging post-punk and dark indie rock.

METZ

The three men of METZ — Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies and Chris Slorach — have been around long enough to know that if you can’t fit it in the van, it’s not worth bringing. Or on the plane, as the case may be for their maiden voyage to Australia. Over the last three-and-a-half years, METZ have slayed in basements, skate shops, clubs, and festivals around the world, sharing stages with Mission of Burma, Death from Above 1979, Archers of Loaf, Mudhoney, Oneida, Constantines, and NoMeansNo.

It’s a formidable task to try and capture such a powerful live band on record. Luckily, Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) and Alexandre Bonenfant were more than up for it. Isolating the band in an old barn for a week with a portable recording rig, they successfully documented the unrelenting live force of the band, and managed to add some new and staggering sonic textures to the recording. Waves of organic feedback and fuzzed-out drones build the classic tension that eventually drops into each track’s relentless, dissonant pulse.

And somehow, the raddest thing about it all is the songwriting. It’s not just riffs. It’s something that some heavy bands don’t get, but METZ do really well—and they do it collectively. With their debut album, released last year on Sub Pop via Inertia, METZ articulated with deafening clarity, that a new power trio is just what the world of good music needs. It’s a hell of an experience, listening to this band; stand back, and watch jaws drop within the first four measures of their set. This is post-hardcore sludge-punk, distilled into pure, but artfully rendered chaos by one of the most brutalising bands in the world today.

• “The technology to crank your guitar up to huge, ear-busting levels can be purchased over the counter, but bands that can pull off volume while inducing claustrophobia are something special. Metz are such a band. The Toronto-based trio’s Sub Pop debut is pure pummel and ugliness in the best sense. The drums thunder away like they’re being bludgeoned at the bottom of an elevator shaft. The bass and guitar pound minimalist patterns through a curtain of fuzz and grit. The songs sound live– not in the sense that they were recorded as-performed, but in the way that represents what loud bands actually sound like when they turn up at a grimy club with cement walls. High frequencies bounce through the stereo field. The vocals seem feedback-baked and half-strangled. There are moments when Metz betray a minor debt to grunge, but most of the time, they’re out on their own bizzaro wavelength, singing about rats, mental instability, or whatever else conjures up appropriate levels of anxiety” – PITCHFORK Top 50 Albums of 2012