More music this week

Haste the Day.
Hope Atlantic.
The Acorn.

HASTE THE DAY

People who only know Indianapolis metalcore five-piece Haste the Day from its 2005 break-through release When Everything Falls can be forgiven for not recognizing most of the dudes in the picture that accompanies this article.

Since that release, the band’s line-up has almost completely changed.

Bassist Michael Murphy is the only remaining founding member. Vocalist Stephen Keech joined the band just in time for 2007’s Pressure the Hinges.

In between 2008’s Dreamer and their latest album, 2010’s Attack of the Wolf King, the band lost two members and replaced them with three other musicians.

“Honestly, (Attack of the Wolf King) is our best record yet,” Murphy told LushBeat.com in June. “I feel like we have finally reached our final potential as a band.”

That might sound like b.s. – what else is the guy gonna say, right? – but Attack of the Wolf King is being hailed as the band’s strongest release yet.

“The vocals are much more dynamic, the instrumentation (especially the guitars) is several levels above what it once was, and the song-writing structure has always been above average,” raved OregonMusicNews.com. “This is a band that’s making the music they truly love to make, and it shows.”

“This is easily their best effort to date,” Exclaim agreed, with the All Music Guide describing the sound as “precision-cut machine gun beats and tight, Iron Maiden-inspired ‘guitarmonies’.”

Catch Haste the Day live on Sunday, Oct. 24 when they open for Enter Shikari at the West End Cultural Centre.

Visit www.hastetheday.com.

—Aaron Epp

HOPE ATLANTIC

Whether or not you like Coheed and Cambria, or even know who they are, you probably have at least 20 friends allegedly attending their Oct. 24 show thanks to Hope Atlantic and a slew of other local bands.

As part of a marketing scheme to pack the Garrick Centre, local bands competed to open for Coheed and Cambria and their touring partners, Fang Island.

The contest began with getting bands to send a Facebook event invitation to all their friends, making them click “attend” and “liking” the MySpace link of the band they wanted to open. As a result, everybody with some link to local music in Winnipeg was invited to this show.

Reaping the benefits of a show currently boasting 1,300 alleged guests on Facebook is contest winner, Hope Atlantic. After beating out a plethora of other local talent, Hope Atlantic landed in the top three and was finally chosen by Coheed and Cambria to open the show.

“It builds that extra hype for the show,” said Matty Hallick, Hope Atlantic’s longhaired, bespectacled and always unpredictably-dressed drummer. “With the economy now, you would have a thousand people attending a show, but now it’ll be more like seven hundred. You’re losing a lot of people based on the business.”

With enough guests “attending” to violate the fire code of the event venue, it’s easy to see how this promotion strategy could begin to become more popular.

Watch Hope Atlantic open for Coheed and Cambria at the Garrick Centre on Sunday, Oct. 24. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster. Visit www.myspace.com/hopeatlantic.

— Samuel Swanson

THE ACORN

The Acorn found fame with their 2007 release Glory Hope Mountain, which was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. Now they’re back after an extended break with a new album, No Ghost, and will be coming to a venue near you. 

Rolf Klausener, the band’s singer and guitarist, says the Acorn originally began as a home recording project.

“It’s been a long process over the last seven years going from electronic to bedroom recordings to full band to multi-percussional concept albums about my mom to where we are today,” he said.

After being on the road for three years – touring with the likes of Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, and Elbow – the band spent two years recording Glory Hope Mountain, and then decided to take a break.

They rented a cottage in Northern Quebec for three weeks where they wrote No Ghost.

“We wrote No Ghost as a group which was the first time we had done that and it was an interesting concept for me because I don’t typically write lyrics around the rest of the band,” explained Klausener.

Klausener promises the show will be one hell of a dance party, because the Acorn is bringing the cottage to you, literally.

“We’ve actually brought a whole cottage set with lamps and walls and needle point paintings and drawings and stuff.”

You can see the Acorn live at the Park Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 27. Doors at 7:15 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Tickets are $13 in advance, or $17 at the door.

Visit www.theacorn.ca.

— Robin Dudgeon

Published in Volume 65, Number 8 of The Uniter (October 21, 2010)

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