Montreal Scene Report: Get Your HAD On

As you know, we here at Decibel magazine pride ourselves on our ability to bring you the latest and greatest in extreme underground metal stylings. In that spirit, we offer the following Montreal scene report from our intrepid reporter and comrade, J. Bennett. Doctor Bennett filed this report while still in Montreal, that sparkling city by the bay (ocean? lake?) from which he has yet to return. We fear his “full immersion” style of journalism has compelled him to join some of the vagabonds profiled in this piece.

Outside the Mont Royal metro stop, Crazy Henri shakes his dirty fists at the heavens and curses the god that has forsaken him. The noise coming from his mouth sounds like a dying whale being fed into a wood chipper by an army of smelly homeless dudes suffering from the DTs. That’s probably because Crazy Henri is a smelly homeless dude suffering from the DTs, right down to the green teeth and semen-encrusted pantaloons. But our man isn’t feeding a dying whale into a wood chipper. He can’t even afford a wood chipper. Luckily, the hot new music genre Crazy Henri is credited with inventing is totally and completely free—despite the fact that you can’t yet steal it off the Internet.

Yes, the latest extreme metal craze currently sweeping the rues of Montreal is called homeless a cappella doom—that’s HAD for short—and it sounds a little something like this:

“AAAOORRAAARGGHHHH!” (Repeat 22 times.)

That’s right, oh faithful readers. No shredding solos, tasty riffing or thunderous blastbeats required. This shit is au naturel, from Crazy Henri’s armpit-microphone to Allah’s uncaring ears. And what began just a few months ago as one unspeakably horrible-smelling human being throwing down the doom—homeless a cappella doom—outside of Who Wants A Crepe? can now be found panhandling in the entryway of nearly every Couche Tard convenience store in this magical quasi-European burg. Today, Crazy Henri enjoys godfather status in the HAD scene. Later this week, he’ll open for local punkers Vaginal Croutons at Les Foufounes Electriques, a.k.a. the Electric Asshole, over on Saint Catherine.

Meanwhile, the occasionally deflated but always hilarious junkies on Saint Laurent congregate in the parking lot behind Club Soda in hopes of catching an impromptu performance by Monique LeTrec, otherwise known as The Sea Hag. Rumor has it she washed up on the beach back in ’03 after fleeing Newfoundland on a raft made out of balsa wood and fish heads. But today she’s the gin-blossomed Bonnie to Crazy Henri’s shitfaced Clyde: The doom-loving duo often go dumpster diving together in the alleys behind Montreal’s most glamorous jack shacks.

Of course, where the smoke from a burgeoning musical trend befouls the local air, the firemen of opportunity always come calling with lighter fluid and recording contracts. Pierre “Peaches” Benoit, a longtime HAD supporter and part-time social worker, is one of these soul-sucking carpetbaggers. But he agrees to meet us for a drink upstairs at Pussy Corps, so we let him run through his talking points. “Homelessness is not a joke, and with a decent push from a big label like Warner Brothers, homeless a cappella doom won’t be one for much longer,” he insists. In a nod to local custom, Benoit arrives at our meeting in typical Quebecois summer garb: baggy three-quarter length cargo pants (white), a bright neon tank top and a moldy pair of burlap man-sandals. “Plus, I read the first half of Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night In Suck City last year, so I know what I’m doing when it comes to dealing with these artists.”

Benoit’s first cash-in is a HAD compilation called Get The Fuck Off My Car, Creep—a re-appropriation, he says, of an epithet often hurled at many of the compilation’s contributors in between street performances. An advance copy of the track listing reveals that Crazy Henri recorded at least two songs for the collection, including his hits “I Got Arrested For Public Urination (Again)” and “Brown Bag Blues,” while the Sea Hag delivers her asphalt anthem “Olde English Lover” and a doomed-out cover of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” Elsewhere, newcomer Gilles L’espalier chimes in with “URRRGGGHHHHH!” and “I Needs A Dollar For The Muthafuckin’ Aliens,” a local buzz track that fuses HAD with London-style grime rap.

“I don’t know about you,” Benoit says as his halitosis nearly knocks us off our barstool. “But I think this shit could be huge.”

This bullshit originally appeared in the September 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.

Run, Piggy, Run

Okay, so I had this dream the other night, dude. It was kinda fucked up. At first, it was totally cool, like one of those recurring deals I have about Becky Griswold, where we’re in the bushes behind the armory and she’s giving me the business, real sloppy and nasty-like. Only we’re not in the bushes and instead of Becky Griswold it’s the dudes from Pig Destroyer and there’s no business going on anywhere. So right off the bat it’s a total bummer. But it gets worse, dude. Much worse. These dudes, they’re after me for some reason. And they’re all armed to the tits. But instead of like regular weapons they’ve got these fucking mechanical arms with huge pincer grips and C-clamps and massive rusty drill bits like the one going up that dude’s ass on the cover of Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven. You know—the original, uncensored cover. Before they pussed out and changed it to that stupid blue skull thing.

Anyway, I suddenly realize—in my dream, that is—that the dudes from Pig Destroyer wanna use that massive rusty drill bit on ME in much the same way Pantera used it before they pussed out. As in, NOT FUN AT ALL, dude. And I’m not positive what I’m thinking in my dream as far as the pincers and C-clamps go, but I’m pretty sure it involves something terrible and irreparable being done to my genitals. Like I get the feeling the whole general package area is in severe jeopardy. Horrifying, right? I’m not sure if this was one of those Freudian sexual inadequacy deals, or what, but that’s not really what I was concerned about at the time, you know? I was concerned about getting the fuck out of there as fast as fucking possible. So I do what anyone would do—I haul tits, dude. I run like I’ve never run before, like the dude from Chariots Of Fire. Like Carl Lewis all jacked up on muscle juice in 1984. Like Forrest Fucking Gump, dude. The word “fleeing” comes to mind, because that’s what I was doing. I was fleeing. For the safety and preservation of my package.

So I’m hauling balls, literally and figuratively. Through a field. Through a stream. Waist-deep in water. When I’m in the drink, I’m thinking about eels and piranhas and those creepy things with the stingers that killed that Australian dude on the TV. Oh, and candirú, dude. Are you familiar with these aberrations of nature? Totally vicious little fuckers, they swim up your dick hole when you blow a piss and lodge themselves in your urethra with these little spikes that they have. Think about THAT for a second, dude: Dick parasites. I guess they only exist in the Amazon, but I’m not exactly sure where this dream is taking place. Then, after the stream, I come to a bridge, and there’s bodies hanging everywhere with their guts spilling out. Just completely disemboweled, dude, like the cover of that Cannibal Corpse album. You know the one. And it smells fucking disgusting, like they’ve had the drill treatment, if you know what I mean. Have you ever smelled anything in a dream, by the way? Yeah, me neither. First time for everything, I guess.

Finally, I get to a rickety-looking shack under a flickering street light. I wish my REM cycle had more originality, but I guess that’s all it could come up with. Apparently, I’m a lazy bastard even in my dreams. Still, I’m totally creeped out at the sight of this place, and there’s no way I’m gonna set foot in there. But I can hear the dudes from Pig Destroyer behind me. They’re not very far back at all. And now that massive rusty drill is switched on and spinning with that high-pitched whir you hear at the dentist’s office and all I can think about is how much I hate the dentist, how much I really would like to keep my genitals intact and how I really, REALLY don’t want that drill anywhere near my poop chute. So I practically throw myself at the door, dude. And the dudes from Pig Destroyer are right behind me now. Even over the sound of the drill, I can hear them laughing at me—it’s more of an evil cackling, really—about all the unsightly shit they’re gonna do to my undercarriage. But the door won’t open, dude. It’s totally fucking locked or stuck or barricaded or something. And then all I can hear is the relentless whir of the drill as the dudes from Pig Destroyer grab me and start forcing my pants down.

That’s when it ends. And when I wake up, I’ve totally got a boner. Which is weird because none of those dudes are really my type.

This bullshit originally ran in the August 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.