CMW 2016: Bend Sinister @ The Comfort Zone

WEDNESDAY – Few bands in Canada are more reliably awesome on stage than Bend Sinister are. And they proved it once again this Canadian Music Week. Their first set of the festival was a fairly low profile slot: late at night on a Wednesday, while most of the city slept. But in the basement of the old Hotel Waverley, bathed in the sickly blue light of the Comfort Zone, the Vancouver prog-rockers tore through a blistering series of songs — the kind of tunes that it's hard to believe were written in the 21st century, and not in the hey day of classic rock. Sweat-drenched headbands and raging keyboard solos; vicious leg kicks and vibrating tambourines. Given the timeslot, the audience was sparse — only about a couple dozen strong — but I'm not sure I've ever heard such a small crowd give such a big roar in response to a band. And Bend Sinister deserved it. Just as you'd expect.

 

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Read all our coverage of CMW 2016 here.

Words by Adam Bunch, Editor-in-Chief of the Little Red Umbrella and the creator of the Toronto Dreams Project and Toronto Historical Jukebox. You can read his posts here, follow him on Twitter here, or email him at adam@littleredumbrella.com.

Photos by Carmen Cheung, the Arts Editor for The Little Red Umbrella.