Street Beat

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Eyam

"There are tons of different genres of metal on this bill," says Eyam bass player/main PR man Kevin Focht in S-Beat World HQ on an uncharacteristically warm afternoon in late January.
   
"We’re offering a lot of variety for people at this show," Focht continues about the upcoming, all-destroying, five-band gig at The Zoo on Feb. 11 featuring technical death metal masters Eyam (pronounced Eee-um) with C*nt Punisher, Mortalis, Antikathera (ex-Lykeum, PPR), and Abhorupt.
   
"I guess you would call Eyam progressive death metal," Focht says a week later outside of his band’s practice space. Eyam’s main mission is melting brain cells and opening minds using meticulous metal with an eerie edge and arcane vengeance.
   
While other members of Eyam get loud with the death inside, Focht is working hard in the real world  promoting the show.
   
"We slow it down to play clean riffs instead of thrashing away all the time. You can take metal in many different ways. It’s part of this
marriage which is our message — don’t believe everything you see and hear.
   
"We talk about stuff in the world in a direct way by using topics. Chuck (Labossiere) writes about stuff in a weird way, so the listener can take something different out of it. We’re not as direct as we may seem," continues Focht about the five-piece group which, along with him and Manitoba metal legend Labossiere (Psychotic Gardening, ex-Immortal Possession and more), also includes co-founding guitarists A.J. Schmidt and Mike Janssen with Tomi Stangl on drums.
   
Take what U will from it all, street beaters. Eyam is a force of metal to be reckoned with. Check out the band’s senses-shattering, five-song self-titled EP featuring killer cuts such as Insect Vector and Cosmic Intervention, or the new video, Architects of Starvation, shot by Andrew Wiens (Psychotic Gardening) to experience what I mean.
   
"We’ll play all three at the show," Focht says. "And we have a whole bunch of new songs like Sarcophical Planet, Parasitic Breed and Bacterial Cross Contamination." Visit Eyam.ca for more info about the vid, or hit the band on Facebook for more electronic info and insightful metal discussion.
   
Being a consummate and thoughtful presenter, Focht next describes the other metal bands on the blasting Zoo bill.
   
"CP is a heavy, grindy death metal band, and Mortalis is a heavy party metal band — great stuff to hear. Antikathera is experimental progressive metal and Abhorupt play technical death metal with a crazy guitar style. The show is going to be varied and great," Focht says.
   
"And it’s a good time for Eyam — we’ve got a lot of stuff going on," he says, veering his pitch without missing a beat.
   
"We’re planning to record a full-length album soon, and we’re going to have new shirts available at the show," Focht says. "We’re really excited about them. I’m not the type of person that would wear my own band’s shirt, but I’d wear this one."
   
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