Features

The popular Montreal Fringe Festival has finally begun. Of all the indoor art, music and theatre performances it usually hosts, this year’s Fringe is back in full swing and expanding to outdoor activities again. Taking advantage of the summer clear skies and this expansion, Plateau Astro has joined Fringe to organize The Night Sky Tour.

We get it. Not everyone loves metal like we do. The harsh vocals, heavy distorted guitars and blast beats can often be a turn off. But even the most hardened metalheads didn’t start their musical journey listening to the most brutal of death metal bands. We had to be slowly eased into the genre, beginning with something accessible before diving deep into pure aggression.

Songs about getting reckless, getting wasted, and getting naked tend to fall in and out of fashion frequently, but for the better part of a decade, they absolutely dominated the airwaves. The hair was high, the clothes were tight, and the dudes looked like ladies, because hard rock ruled, the supply never ran dry, and it seemed like the party would never end. Of course, it did, as all good times do, and no matter how many bands have tried, a true hair metal revival has always been perpetually around the corner, and also forever out of reach. What that era left behind is a legion of true believers, semi-regular airplay in strip clubs and sports stadiums, and the stories. Holy shit, the stories.

“I hope it's going to make people dream. Because I dreamt a lot about that project,” said Julia Daigle, skittish about whether that was too pretentious a statement to make about her recent album, Un singe sur l'épaule.

This article originally appeared in the 2021 POP Montreal Programme

Photo Credit: Unknown

CJLO 1690 AM will not be celebrating Canada Day. In what is now an annual tradition, CJLO will be airing documentaries from the National Campus and Community Radio Association’s Resonating Reconciliation, a project that engages community radio to help reconcile all Canadians with the history of Indian Residential Schools.