Local bands Lustre Creame and Advertisement began their tour of western Canada with an excellent show at the Slice, Friday, May 30. I caught all of the acts including the last act “Subtle Like A T-Rex” as the show started late.
Advertisement played first with their usual ferocious set of hardcore punk music. Powered by guitarist and vocalist Adrian Sutherland backed by some throbbing bass from Nigel Derksen and thunderous drumming from Ryan Grieve.
It was all about progressive rock after that with complex time signatures from drummer Chris Lipinski and lots of big, weird guitar riffs from Aaron Trozzo and Jeff Orriss’s bass licks.
Lustre Creame began their set with “Where Do We Go From Here,” and proceeded to play an array of mostly new, complicated, finger bleeding and eardrum puncturing songs.
Most of them were newer songs, but they played some crowd favourites from their last CD.
Subtle Like A T-Rex showed themselves to be aptly named. They played an experimental, jam band influenced set that sounded like Phish on funk music with a nod to early ’70s progressive rock bands like Genesis and Jethro Tull.
There was plenty of funk influenced guitars and a smooth groove that reminded of a Maritime band called Grand Theft Bus from a few years ago.
There was also plenty of harmonies and jazz influenced improvisation.