Ive seen a few people talking about this Misery Signals reunion tour, so I thought Id post my memories of Of Malice and the Magnum Heart for historical purposes. If theres any younger kids here that havent been scared away by Hollywood hopefully youll find this useful, because this was actually a significant moment in Alberta hardcores history. At the time the album came out the Calgary hardcore scene was rapidly reaching escape velocity. The ancients like Far From Over and xRECKITTx launched it at the start of the decade, then the second generation that would eventually form Nikola Tesla and Life At Last came in shortly after and fuelled its propulsion. At the time Of Malice and the Magnum Heart came out in 2004, shows were being held at Carpenters Union Hall in Kensington. That period brought in a lot of new kids (like me), and thats when people in the music scene really started noticing that Hardcore in Calgary was going to reach escape velocity and become its own scene, as opposed to one or two hardcore bands playing on a bill with people trying to combine Refused and Rilo Kiley. So in a sense, of Malice and the Magnum Heart was the soundtrack to the beginning of the scene for a lot of people. It was the soundtrack to us escaping Earths gravity and flying off into space. In the weeks leading up to the album release this was all people could talk about. I remember one night after some show a bunch of people from the scene went to this random place to get wings. There was like three tables of hardcore kids, and everyone there was talking about this album. I dont think Ive ever seen this much hype over an album in any scene ever. People were talking about it like it was going to be the chef doeuvre of metalcore, and I think in some ways it probably is. At that time there were no significant commercial interests in metalcore like there was at the end of the decade. There were no crabwalks, or $30 tickets to see bands that, for whatever reason, needed four Korg synthesizers to be br00tal. Metalcore was about artistry. It was about fusing emotion and melody with hardcore punks chaotic bursts of energy, and I think on this album Misery Signals presented something that could really be considered the chef doeuvre of that ideology. Then there was the emotional connection. A lot of people in the scene at that time were friends with Compromise, and I think a lot of people in Alberta at the time viewed the album as this entire scene rising from the ashes of that tragedy with this blindingly luminous masterpiece. In the story of Superman, the history of Krypton is encoded into the vessel that brings him to Earth. Of Malice and the Magnum Heart is the vessel that brought Superman to Earth, and its encoded with the history of the culture that launched it.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 14:03:36 +0000
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