- Published on
Picks Of The Week (25.11.23 - 01.12.23)
- Authors
- Name
- Lennart Hoffmann
- @lelelelelennart
1. Toronto Is Broken - TORONTOISBROKEN LP [FiXT]
Recommended if you like: Zardonic, Spiritbox, Enter Shikari
That's right, my brother from another mother, Christian Hoffmann, better known as Hinckley-based metal-drum-and-bassador Toronto Is Broken, is back!
Catchup
Let's all get on the same page and catch up with what has happened since the last time we spoke about him first though!
After a decade of experimentation in DnB and all sorts of adjacent genres like Garage and Breakbeat, Christian relatively recently decided to go back to the sound he himself has been loving for ages: Metal! And all the related genres that I'm not going to start listing as I'm sure I'll miss something important. With his third studio album Clare his own label YANA in 2021, Christian started really leaning into incorporating sounds from his other favourite genre into it all, and quickly realised he had struck gold. Not only did I love it to death, the greater Metal community started taking notice of him, with even legendary electronic rock icon Klayton Celldweller, or rather his label FiXT, wanting to take Christian under their Noir wing! After a couple of remixes for the likes of Thornhill (!), Fight The Fade and The Prototypes, it was time for the Broken to be Toronto'd for once: first he celebrated the 10 year anniversary of his Move It debut EP by inviting an elite few from the huge roster of YANA artists, Corrupted Mind, Lateral and Mojay to take a crack at his old tunes, followed by the long-awaited release of CLARE:redux, the remix album for his genre breakthrough moment with the likes of Zardonic, SyRan, MYKOOL and many more contributing some rather sick reinterpretations.
During all of this, however, Christian was of course also working on the follow-up to the album that changed his career trajectory. Emboldened by the success of Clare's metal-infusions, his fourth album was set to go even deeper into it all, with heavier production, harder vocals and more and nastier breakdowns. To accomplish this, he reached out to Gloucesterian possible reptilian Rhianna REEBZ Evens and his long-time go-to epic-vocal man and rave drip designer Sebastian Sebotage Van Driel, invited them both to come to his studio and basically wrote a whole band album together. Lyrically and conceptually inspired by all sorts of fucked-up horror movies, the talented trio smashed out one huge tune after another over the course of what sounds like years, until eventually, Christian's fourth album, confidently titled TORONTOISBROKEN, was finally born. Considering I only talk about stuff I actually really like on here, you can already guess that that endeavour was quite successful, but still, let's take a deeper look!
Note: there are gonna be brief mentions of some quite fucked-up things down below, just FYI!
Track Breakdown
In case my warning wasn't enough, album opener VHS's analog horror inspired warning certainly does the trick to set the scene of the horror themes that will be explored on here. To quote: "It’s not meant to be pleasant".
However, even if your expectations are set correctly, you are probably still not prepared for Breed. Not just because REEBZ's multi-faceted performance features lyrics inspired by Danish Horror movie Breeder, in which women are abducted for their, to say it semi-nicely, ability to produce stem cells in their wombs, but because this is the absolute craziest REEBZ has ever performed and the heaviest Christian has ever produced. Seriously, everything from the gnarly intro, to the insanely hype-inducing delayed drop, to the sneaky 4x4 switch right after, to the absolutely bone-chilling guttural scream as we break it down, to the haunting outro, to even the disturbing music video - this is a straight-up masterpiece right away. Next, we've got Martyrs, this time featuring the other vocal half of this three-piece band, Sebotage! Lyrically inspired by the 2008 French horror movie of the same name and energetically performed with a deeply seated raw rage, this Nu-Metal Neuro Breakbeat smasher doesn't hold back any punches in any department.
Seb keeps this in-your-face energy up as we return to the faster tempos on LOWLIFE, featuring the twisted sounds of YANAlumni Lateral! While comparatively more direct in its DnB-ness, there's still plenty of roughly distorted metal guitar action and powerful screaming action amidst the mind-twisting synths, resulting in the perfect blend of the two producers' sounds. From the more straight-forward DnB, we swerve over to Spiritbox-esque Nu Metalcore on the absolute anthem that is Drip Feed. With REEBZ back in the driver's seat in the vocal department, we smoothly swing back and forth between the ethereally vibey, dangerously catchy, almost uplifting if it wasn't for the disconcerting lyrical succumbing to their oppressors' drip feed torture, chorus and the seething anger that still sometimes breaks through the foggy haze in the breakdowns, and boy, is that ever an effective combo!
The first third now over, it's finally time for the first crossover between our two vocal specialist, RAW! While certainly also working as a descriptor for the ragged guitar, fast-paced drum and catchy synth action on this tune, it is actually in reference to the type of meat our thematic protagonists prefer! Inspired by the 2016 movie with the same title, in which a life-long vegeterian develops an uncontrollable urge for meat after a particularly aggressive hazing ritual (these plots are killing me), the smooth transition from REEBZ' whispered, certifiably creepy spoken-word performance to Seb's more animalistic, gruff barking represents the transformation from intrusive thoughts to actual, physical acts of cannibalism. Standard cannibal experience innit. Good thing is, we can use the left-over blood for the Blood Rites we have scheduled for later in the day! We've already experienced quite a few brief 4x4 switchups in our journey so far, but for this bloodcurling topic Christian turned the knob all the way up, with REEBZ's infectiously looping, computerized vocals hammering home the heart-pounding gravity of it all, before jetting back over to syncopation city.
You know what, I feel like we could use some headbanging in between all this DnB talk. Luckily, Shower Prayer provides us with a perfect opportunity to do so! It feels almost unnecessary to say at this point, but REEBZ once again delivers a frankly stunning performance balancing both the beautiful and beastly sides of both her vocal range and her songwriting, where even mary's poor little lamb is brought to the slaughterhouse, while Christian is wreaking havoc to my neck muscles with his most purely Metal production yet. I mean, just wait until that breakdown. Holy moly doesn't even begin to describe it. This rugged energy is once again channelled back into DnB on Anaesthesia, on which fellow FiXT group Fight The Fade and our battle boi Sebastian work together to bring the horrors of living in a constant subdued state to life. While we are flung from one vocalist to another and back, the tune goes through so many sick moments it would be a fool's errand to name them all. Just trust me when I say they use the 5:24 runtime of this tune to their fullest potential, with so many switches, breakdowns and even chorusses it could make your head spin if it wasn't for the airtight production.
Keeping up with the genre flip-flopping, we now harken back to the early days of Toronto being broken, with the Breakbeat-laced anthem Euphoria! But, like, way more Metal-y, of course. Across almost 6 whole minutes, we've got REEBZ flexing her entire vocal range to display the range of emotions felt by a collective disillusioned from the extensive lies fed to them by the "mouth of a god", like ten different sick metal guitar and synth parts, each sicker than the other, and what feels like five different drops, all somehow working together to create one coherent piece. We ride this wave of pure metal shredding all the way over to the next tune on our list, Nihilist! With Sebotage back on the mic spitting pure bars from the POV of someone with the least amount of cares in the world possible, sometimes so heavily processed that it feels like an actual machine is explaining its messed-up world view to you, Christian decided to match the evil masoch- and machinistic energy by firing up the heavy artillery of barely-containable bass explosions, on top of all stages of syncopation, from heavily stuttery to in-your-face 4x4.
We keep on keeping on with the drums and the basses on Altered States, featuring one of the most exciting newcomers of the moment, with releases on YANA, DeVice, High Tea and even Liquicity and a couple nominations at this year's D&B Arena Awards, Natty Lou! Based on the 1980 body horror movie, a story about an academic ending up in an "altered" state after trying to one-up one of his famous experiments in a sensory-deprivation tank by adding hallucinogens (some of these I really need to watch), this one goes for a more spoken-word out-of-mind approach on the vocal side of things, while the dynamic duo cracks on underneath it all with an ominously eery, but also infectiously bouncy beat. Old Dimension vibes. What's the opposite of "speaking of"? Well, if I knew, I would definitely say that to transition over to the next DnBanger on the tracklist, Circle! While Christian provides the perfect soundtrack to create a moshpit circle to, Seb focusses on his anti-authoritarian appeal to rise up and break out of forced-upon boundaries - it's like poetry! Banging, bassface-causing poetry, that is.
On this final stretch of tunes, we've got one more SEEBZOTAGE wombo-combo ahead of us: Pleasure + Purpose. We've got Seb going "b2b with this freak within him", our favourite possible reebztilian cranking up the vibe-o-meter and Christian going full Madtempo with his various assorted synth stabs. In other words, this track's purpose is pure pleasure! Last but most definitely not least, we've got Threads, with REEBZ giving it her all one last time. Not only is it inspired, in both horrific intensity and lyrical themes, by the 1984 BBC TV Movie Threads, in which the effects of a nuclear holocaust on the day-to-day life in the UK are explored, it also weaves together all the strings laid out by the album's tunes. While REEBZ pulls on our heart strings as the "quilt of society" starts to unravel, we go back through all the different vocal styles and all the various tempos present on this LP, even calling back to some previously used chords (e.g. Blood Rites), culminating in one hell of a powerful DnB finale.
Conclusion
What an absolute joy this album is! Bursting with creative energy, with all sorts of different themes and tempos explored, yet unified by the common thread of horror cinema simply phenomenally performed by REEBZ and Sebotage, this really is Metal DnB at its best. Treating your main vocalists like fellow band members and writing the whole LP with them in mind is something that has worked so well on this that I really hope more artists try it out, it's honestly such a cool idea. Genuinely one of the best albums to come out this year and an absolute achievement for everyone involved. Toronto has been absolutely and utterly obliterated.