People who want to make noise these days make dubstep or electro or something. METZ make squalling, guitar-heavy rock. And while Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies and Chris Slorach might be old-fashioned that way, we'd like to see Deadmau5 try to drown them out when the Toronto trio are in glorious full flight. Mr. Edkins spoke to The Globe and Mail about coming up in a post-Nirvana world.
On Tuesday, your first album comes out on Sub Pop records, who gave the world Nirvana and Soundgarden, and later, The Shins and Beach House. How'd you swing that?
We ended up sending some of our demos to the label, and we got some positive feedback. They said, "Send it to us when it's finished." So we made the record we wanted to make, sent it to them and crossed our fingers. It took about three weeks to hear anything back, and they said, let's do it. That was quite the thrill.
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So you're rich rock stars now, right?
No, we still have our day jobs. Ever since moving to T.O. [from Ottawa], I've done visual research for documentary films. Hayden is a visual artist and he can pay the rent doing that, which is kind of incredible. He did the art for our first couple seven inches. We still obviously need to work to pay the rent at this point, but this record and the band are starting to become more of a fixture in our everyday lives.
Are you wary of how corporate and trendy indie-rock is now, compared to when guitar-rock was the dominant sound in the indie world?
I'm wary in general about everything in life. [laughs] We grew up in [1990s indie-rock] music communities where it was a completely different world; that kind of thinking doesn't really exist any more. I think things have been co-opted to a certain extent, and it is strange, but I don't think our music has changed very much. The way we've approached making music is still very kind of uncompromising, I think.
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METZ play the Horseshoe in Toronto on Fri, Oct 12. Doors 9pm. Tickets are $15 at the door or $12 advance at the Horseshoe Front Bar, Rotate This and Soundscapes.