With Atlas Vending, METZ – Alex Edkins (guitar & vocals), Hayden Menzies (drums) & Chris Slorach (bass) – not only continue to push their music into new territories of dynamics, crooked melodies, & sweat-drenched rhythms, they explore themes of growing up & maturing within a format typically suspended in youth. Atlas Vending delivers their most dynamic, dimensional, & compelling work yet. less
This 7″ is now being physically released for the first time via Three One G, limited to 1,000 copies, with one side of the vinyl being specially printed by The Black Moon Design, and featuring cover art by Jonathan Bauerle.
“Acid” is a song about having a fresh perspective, a newly widened outlook on the world and one’s life. Being shaken awake from a malaise and realizing there is no time for petty bullshit. Love what you love, love who you love! Embrace it and don’t wait.
METZ has shared a new video for their song “Framed by the Comet’s Tail”, directed by the band’s drummer, Hayden Menzies. The visual companion to a personal favourite track of Menzies’ from Atlas Vending was created within a set of self-imposed limitations; it was all shot by Menzies on his phone, edited at home, with no borrowed content. He says of the video “It’s not a literal interpretation of the song by any means, but a document of random firing synapses of the mind during isolation.” Watch the video now.
This week we also announced the first Atlas Vending tour dates and tickets for our 2021 European and UK tour are on sale now. If you can’t wait until 2021, join us next week for a very special livestream of Atlas Vending in its entirety from The Opera House in Toronto.
“Atlas Vending” is Metz’s most dynamic, dimensional, and compelling work of their career, and is now available worldwide from Sub Pop Records.
What people are saying about Atlas Vending: “Atlas Vending is the sound of a band fully confident in itself and delivering their biggest and best work yet.” ★★★★ – Upset Magazine
“The Toronto band maintain a formidable degree of power and velocity throughout their fourth album yet… provide more welcome respites from the ferocious barrage they’re otherwise highly skilled at delivering.” [8/10] – Uncut
” A record which draws on 35 years of North American alt-rock excellence, while still stamping its creators’ own identity firmly across its grooves.” [4/5] – Kerrang
”By gathering everything the group has done to date and mixing it together Metz manage to create a perfectly potent cocktail, one filled with nostalgia, sadness and grinding euphoria.” [8/10] – Loud and Quiet
“The expansiveness of the sonic palette on Atlas Vending just gives the band more room to paint outside the lines.” [8/10] – Under The Radar
“A record that feels both raw and refined, this will shake you to the core”★★★★ – DIY Magazine
METZ have released a new single entitled “A Boat To Drown In”, taken from their forthcoming album, “Atlas Vending”, due out 9th October.
Atlas Vending comes as the Toronto noise-rock trio’s fourth studio album, following 2017’s Strange Peace, which was recorded with revered engineer Steve Albini. The upcoming release was co-produced by Uniform’s Ben Greenburg and was engineered by Seth Manchester at Pawtucket, Rhode Island studio Machines With Magnets. Released alongside A Boat To Drown In was a music video directed by Tony Wolski.
Speaking of Metz’s upcoming release, guitarist/vocalist Alex Edkins explained in a press release that the band’s goal when approaching their fourth release was to “remain in flux” and “grow in a natural and gradual way”. “Change is inevitable if you’re lucky,” Edkins said. “We’ve always been wary to not overthink or intellectualize the music we love but also not [to be] satisfied until we’ve accomplished something that pushes us forward.” The music made by Edkins and his compatriots Hayden Menzies (drums) and Chris Slorach (bass) has always been a little difficult to pin down. Their earliest recordings contained nods to the teeming energy of early ‘90s DIY hardcore, the aggravated angularities of This Heat, and the noisy riffing of AmRep’s quintessential guitar manglers. but there was never a moment where Metz sounded like they were paying tribute to the heroes of their youth. If anything, the sonic trajectory of their albums captured the journey of a band shedding influences and digging deeper into their fundamental core—steady propulsive drums, chest-thumping bass lines, bloody-fingered guitar riffs, the howling angst of our fading innocence. With Atlas Vending, Metz not only continues to push their music into new territories of dynamics, crooked melodies, and sweat-drenched rhythms, they explore the theme of growing up and maturing within a format typically suspended in youth. Covering seemingly disparate themes such as paternity, crushing social anxiety, addiction, isolation, media-induced paranoia, and the restless urge to leave everything behind, each of Atlas Vending’s ten songs offer a snapshot of today’s modern condition and together form a musical and narrative whole.
Sub Pop Records, the band’s record label, noted that Atlas Vending will mark a change from the band’s previous releases, describing the record as METZ’s most “dynamic, dimensional, and compelling work of their career”.
“While past METZ albums thrived on an abrasive relentlessness, the trio embarked on Atlas Vending with the goal to make a more patient and honest record – something that invited repeated listens rather than a few exhilarating bludgeonings.” “It’s as if the band realised they were in it for the long haul, and their music could serve as a constant as they navigated life’s trials and tribulations.”
“Atlas Vending” by METZ on Sub Pop Records released 9th October
Since releasing their self-titled debut record in 2012, which The New Yorker magazine called, “One of the year’s best albums…a punishing, noisy, exhilarating thing,” the Toronto-based 3-piece METZ have garnered international acclaim as one of the most electrifying and forceful live acts, touring widely and extensively, playing hundreds of shows each year around the world.
Now, Alex Edkins (guitar, vocals), along with Hayden Menzies (drums), and Chris Slorach (bass) are set to unleash their highly-anticipated third full-length album, Strange Peace, an emphatic but artful hammer swing to the status quo.
“The best punk isn’t an assault as much as it’s a challenge — to what’s normal, to what’s comfortable, or simply to what’s expected. Teetering on the edge of perpetual implosion,” NPR wrote in their glowing review of METZ’s 2015 second album, II.
Angular, ear-piercing and provocative. Imagine the clatter of early Sonic Youth brought up to warp speed.
The Fat Angel Sings 