By Korgüll The Destroyer - Metal for Supper - The Afternoon Edition - 04/05/2005

This is one intense album. Local band Despised Icon’s latest album, The Healing Process, is some of the most brutal music to come out of the city since Cryptopsy. Come to think of it, the two bands have several things in common: both are from Montreal, both are signed to Century Media, and both manage to keep their sound from becoming mindless, mind-numbing brutality by injecting a high degree of technical skill into their music. The similarities end there, however.

By Christopher Bussmann - Bop and Beyond - 06/07/2005

Jo Ann Daugherty's debut album Range of Motion is a stunning surprise from a tiny jazz label out of Chicago called BluJazz. Chicago once was, and still is, one hell of a jazz town. The Chicago scene is one of the few old bastions of jazz still thriving in North America. From venerable elders like Von Freeman to upstarts like young Ms. Daugherty here, the jazz currently coming out of Chicago is well worth checking out.

By Lisa Weatherby - 05/18/05

While sold-out theatres around town were screening illuminated battles of the light sabre kind, another well-lit spectacle was taking place at the equally sold-out Kasabian concert last Wednesday night. Beams of purple, green and blue flooded the dark space, creating an ambiance that puts the UFO landing from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind to shame. As the shadowy figures took to the stage amid a cloudy purple haze, the crowd roared and cheered in anticipation of something grand, something of a higher power.

By DCU - No Sleep Til Bedtime - 04/27/2005

I am always incredibly excited to see one of my favorite and challenging grind bands Cephalic Carnage, and even though I had just seen them days before, it was my pleasure to trek out to El Salon to see them again. El Salon is certainly not the best locale for a metal show, not only is it way up on St-Laurent, where us metal kids do not like to travel, but the whole atmosphere of the venue just isn’t conducive to that kind of show. But like always you make the best of a bad situation on an ugly rainy night, and you get ready thrash out to frenzied blistering music.