Monday, December 28, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Visual evidence of aural destruction.
Live photos from the BCxDC "Year Zero" CD release partaaaaay at this link: http://ivyleah.blogspot.com/2009/11/bcdc-and-burning-love.html
Thanks Ivy!
Thanks Ivy!
Monday, November 30, 2009
BCxDC Interview With CHARTattack.com
http://www.chartattack.com/news/77303/bastard-child-death-cult-try-not-to-sound-like-100-different-things
By: Keith Carman
"I have a serious problem," admits Bastard Child Death Cult (BCxDC) vocalist Adam "Doom" Sewell.
No, it's not some The Dirt-esque revelation about shoving toxic substances into his orifices — or those of others. It's more a realization that after years of fronting incredibly diverse acts (Monster Voodoo Machine, Damn 13, Automatic Dub Riot), it's time for him to pare things back.
"At any given moment, I have ideas for two or three different bands in my head, and it's been really difficult learning to keep all of these ideas separate from each other," he says.
"I've had to learn some hard lessons over the years that audiences and listeners don't want songs from me that have everything and the kitchen sink in them. No one needs a reggae/techno/punk/southern rock/Sabbath-influenced, low-fi garage rock, trip-hop, rockabilly song. Trust me, I've tried."
Thankfully, though, Sewell has refined his attack, assisted by the abilities of guitarists Adam Arsenault and Darren Quinn, bassist Dave Smedley and drummer Joel Bath.
Bastard Child Death Cult's Year Zero debut full-length is a deadly blast of rudimentary, ball-quaking metal pummelled into shape by the obliterating, no-frills hardcore of originals such as Black Flag and Discharge. Now imagine all of that being sodomized by death punkers Turbonegro back when they were actually dangerous. In essence, Year Zero is the kind of shit that makes biker gangs nervous.
And how exactly does one go from the wonky purple haze of reggae-punk to flat-out menace? Sewell calls it the "two-minute rule," noting while the band are still intent on crafting quality tunes, BCxDC are about embracing expedient and getting it done before it gets mired in over-thinking.
"[We] pick up the guitar and if the song doesn't come together in two minutes, scrap it and move on to something else," he says with resolve. "I also keep in mind that we're playing heavy, aggressive punk rock, so I purposely leave out ideas that don't work within those parameters."
It works. Year Zero is easily on the same playing field as Southern gurus Arson Anthem, west coast speed freaks Zeke and the Voivod of yesteryear when they were basically hammering out Motorhead riffs at supersonic speed. Sewell is quick to dispel the hyperbole about their sound and style, though.
"All that I can tell you right now is that we simply do what we do. We plug in, play and hope that it's not all too self-indulgent. Ultimately though, it's just me and my inner 15 year old screaming at each other."
Friday, November 20, 2009
ThePunkSite.com Reviews "Year Zero"
http://thepunksite.com/reviews.php?page=album/number_d/bastardchilddeathcult_yearzeroIf you meshed together metal staple Motorhead’s ever-heavy riffs, The Video Dead’s chaotic song structure and enthusiasm, and hardcore veteran Death Before Dishonor’s unrelenting hardcore delivery, then you’d have the Toronto based Bastard Child Death Cult (BCxDC). While technically only a year old, the band is really the spiritual successor of lead vocalist Adam Sewell’s previous act, Damn 13. But this isn’t purely Sewell’s show. No, every one of the band’s five members, consisting of members of acts like The Cancer Bats and Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah, find themselves at the centre of the hectic and frenzied product. As implied by the band’s self-made GI-JOE video montage (check it out on their website), BCxDC’s debut, Year Zero, is this year’s soundtrack to destruction.
Featuring three equally active guitarists, Year Zero never slows down – and certainly never offers listeners a chance to catch their breath. Like in “Blackout,” most tracks feature the tough, guiding crunch of heavy riffs and a thunderous backing bass – the type you hear when the metalhead sitting next to you on the bus closes their eyes, and air drums their way to hearing loss. In other words, BCxDC makes loud music that should be embraced without reserve.
The album also features occasionally surfacing metal solos, serving to elevate BCxDC’s sound and cement them as more than mere noise rockers. The solos on tracks like “Halo” and “Black Thorn Rising” demonstrate unquestionable technical ambition and ability. Such moments astutely counterbalance quick and messy tracks like “Slave One” and “American Graveyard,” making the album digestible for those who don’t normally experience this much intensity in a given year.
But BCxDC’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. With such a dedication to raw and unhinged chaos, there isn’t a lot of room for musical growth in the current formula. Thankfully the album only runs twenty-five minutes, so repetition never really becomes an issue, but it does force the question: where does BCxDC go from here? Will they water down their product? Will they keep the formula the same? How will they expand their existing sound? According to a recent news post by Sewell, the next album will feature even heavier riffs (I’ll pose the obvious question: how?), and a “massive groovetastic whitey-twostep.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but if it ends up nearly as well done as anything on Year Zero, then Bastard Child Death Cult’s future looks bright. 4/5
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Exclaim! reviews "Year Zero"
http://www.exclaim.ca/musicreviews/latestsub.aspx?csid1=115&csid2=870&fid1=42550
Bastard Child Death Cult
Year Zero
By Brad Schmale
Toronto, ON's hardcore scene has seen an abundance of acts emerge as of late but very few of them posses the ferocity and noise-polluted aggression of Bastard Child Death Cult. Although the band have existed for a short period of time, their members are all too familiar with the underground rock scene, as most of them are affiliates of Hog Town warriors like Cancer Bats, Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah and Damn 13. Armed with a crushing style of d-beat hardcore, similar to Discharge and Tragedy, this debut release is bursting with intensity, primarily on "Coffin Dragger," "Dead to Me Now" and the sludgy "American Graveyard." Additionally, former Cursed/current Burning Love vocalist Chris Colohan lends his distinctive bellow to the onslaught of sound throughout the album. Year Zero is a powerful and rabid effort that masochistically assaults listeners before leaving them wanting more. (Stereo Dynamite)
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
New "Year Zero" album review!
From Ground Control Magazine: http://groundcontrolmag.com/detail/3/1710/
REVIEW BY: Bill Adams
Sometimes, as hardcore rockers get older, they find that it gets progressively more difficult to summon the fire required to pound out aggressive rock on a nightly basis. They slow down, ease up and, while the flames may not have died, they dim or at least start to burn a different color. When Damn 13 singer Adam “Doom” Sewell announced the birth of Bastard Child Death Cult last year, in spite of the ominous overtones in the new band's name, a lot of fans braced themselves for the same kind of decline; it was perceived as an unfortunate event, but one that many viewed as inevitable with the passage of time.
Those fans shouldn't have been so quick to bow to that perceived inevitability. As it turns out, Sewell and this new band that includes members of Damn 13, Cancer Bats, Monster Voodoo Machine, Soulstorm and Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah have done the exact opposite of lighten up; they've declared a brand new start with new axes to grind. Year Zero doesn't even contemplate slowing down or lightening up for one instant during the run-time of the album's ten tracks.
Year Zero really does live up to its name; it plays like a brand new band insofar as not playing it even a little bit safe at any point during the album – everyone just goes for broke. The triple threat guitar onslaught supplied by Darren Quinn, Mike “13” Charette and Junior stands up as a single jagged and imposing force that only gets run through by Davey “Riot” Smedley's monolithic bass (check out the back end of “Radio Silence” if you want your brown eyes turned blue) and chased by Joel Bath's drumming. Particularly on songs like “Buzzkill,” “Blackout” and “Halo,” the band makes the most of its unique hybrid that incorporates metal weight, punk speed and hardcore's ceaseless aggression and doesn't come off as sounding too close to any of them exactly, but doesn't collapse in on itself and spill out as an over-ambitious mess either. Rather, what listeners get is a sound akin to an unrefined (and very, very pissed off) adrenaline rush that strikes out in every available direction and floors it balls-out each time. It's actually a terrifying assault.
Who could have seen this coming? Given the long-standing “lighten up until you fade to nothing with age” tactics that hardcore has always employed, it's a safe bet that the answer to that question will be a unanimous chorus of “no one.” Something like Year Zero has never happened in punk, metal or hardcore before; it's a new beginning, and it's actually a good, satisfying one.
REVIEW BY: Bill Adams
Sometimes, as hardcore rockers get older, they find that it gets progressively more difficult to summon the fire required to pound out aggressive rock on a nightly basis. They slow down, ease up and, while the flames may not have died, they dim or at least start to burn a different color. When Damn 13 singer Adam “Doom” Sewell announced the birth of Bastard Child Death Cult last year, in spite of the ominous overtones in the new band's name, a lot of fans braced themselves for the same kind of decline; it was perceived as an unfortunate event, but one that many viewed as inevitable with the passage of time.Those fans shouldn't have been so quick to bow to that perceived inevitability. As it turns out, Sewell and this new band that includes members of Damn 13, Cancer Bats, Monster Voodoo Machine, Soulstorm and Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah have done the exact opposite of lighten up; they've declared a brand new start with new axes to grind. Year Zero doesn't even contemplate slowing down or lightening up for one instant during the run-time of the album's ten tracks.
Year Zero really does live up to its name; it plays like a brand new band insofar as not playing it even a little bit safe at any point during the album – everyone just goes for broke. The triple threat guitar onslaught supplied by Darren Quinn, Mike “13” Charette and Junior stands up as a single jagged and imposing force that only gets run through by Davey “Riot” Smedley's monolithic bass (check out the back end of “Radio Silence” if you want your brown eyes turned blue) and chased by Joel Bath's drumming. Particularly on songs like “Buzzkill,” “Blackout” and “Halo,” the band makes the most of its unique hybrid that incorporates metal weight, punk speed and hardcore's ceaseless aggression and doesn't come off as sounding too close to any of them exactly, but doesn't collapse in on itself and spill out as an over-ambitious mess either. Rather, what listeners get is a sound akin to an unrefined (and very, very pissed off) adrenaline rush that strikes out in every available direction and floors it balls-out each time. It's actually a terrifying assault.Who could have seen this coming? Given the long-standing “lighten up until you fade to nothing with age” tactics that hardcore has always employed, it's a safe bet that the answer to that question will be a unanimous chorus of “no one.” Something like Year Zero has never happened in punk, metal or hardcore before; it's a new beginning, and it's actually a good, satisfying one.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
BrokenBeard.com writes the gospel of "Year Zero".
Killer review of our "Year Zero" album at the brand spankin' new (and completely righteous) BrokenBeard.com site: http://www.brokenbeard.com/?p=108
Bastard Child Death CultYear Zero
Stereo Dynamite
The whole country’s gone MAD, gripped with some kind of interminable, back-breaking FEAR. The pigs have struck. The future is BLEAK. Everyone’s afraid to get out of bed in the morning and the person next to you on the street corner will claw at your throat with unnerving FURY if you should even so much as cough in their general direction. It’s everyone for themselves and it’s HEINOUS. There’s no vaccine for that kind of lawlessness and DOOM. But there is a soundtrack.
Adam Sewell’s (ex-Damn 13, Monster Voodoo Machine) new brain bastard child is BCxDC, an anarchistic black force of Toronto punk metal that features current and former members of Damn 13, Monster Voodoo Machine, Cancer Bats, and Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah. Their debut, Year Zero, is quick and deadly, like a shot of curdled venom from a sharp syringe, and Adam’s putting this one out on his own label, so you know the fucker is serious about its plague-like efficacy.
It’s ROTTEN out there and Cursed isn’t coming back anytime soon, so KILL or be killed.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Good morning from the West Annex.
A quick update of strategic activities / warfare / political posturing / afterparty guestlist schmoozing / name-dropping / autotuning / coattail riding and "bro'ing down" from the BCxDC frontline:
NEW GUITAR PLAYER: As most of you know, we have never kept a solid band line-up when it comes to guitar players. We consist mostly as a group of friends who get together and make a lot of noise. As for our guitarists, if someone is available, they come play a show. If not, then someone else takes their place. It's never been a big deal with us, and it's actually made life very easy for everyone. To date, Junior, Darren, Mike and Justin have all been fantastic to work with, and they're all killer players.
But now that we're ramping things up and planning real tours, energy drink endorsed youth culture events, Youtube live simulcasts from various mega-domes, alt/hipster approved award show afterparty performances, in-studio vlogs, fashion spreads in Burlington-come-Brooklyn-via-Parkdale blogs, and general scenester approved appearances, we figured that we'd better get a more stable line up together. Because if Queen St. W. is confused by your band line up, well then son - you're a nobody in THIS town.
And with all that, we'd like to announce that we've settled on a rather stable line up of guitar players: DARREN QUINN - who many of you already know from his time with Monster Voodoo Machine / Redeemer and of course BCxDC, and the new guy: ADAM ARSENAULT. Adam as some of you may know is the 6 string ass-kicker in Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah. The man shreds, riffs heavy, and has the most crushing guitar sound around. Adam will make his live debut with us Nov. 6 in Toronto. We can't wait to kick it into gear with him.
VIDEO NEWS: Tomorrow night we'll be filming a video for "RADIO SILENCE" with our good friend Michael Lylloff directing. I won't ruin any conceptual surprises for you, but if this goes as planned, it should be killer and something a bit out of the ordinary.
CD RELEASE SHOW: OK, so we wanted to put together a Toronto CD release show for "Year Zero". We weren't sure who to add to the line up (or who would even want to play with us!), but NEVER in our wildest dreams did we think that we'd be able to put together a show like this! BURNING LOVE, CRUX OF AUX and WARCRIMES - HOLY FUCK MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE!! A huge THANK YOU to these 3 bands for playing this one with us. This show is gonna rule.
MERCH: Hey, what's that you say? You want to own a killer new BCxDC shirt?? Well then my friend, why not head over to the brand spankin' new STEREO DYNAMITE ONLINE STORE! Here's the link: http://stereodynamite.bigcartel.com
ALBUM #2: The writing is now well underway for our second album. This one is already shaping up to be a bit different than "Year Zero" with the riffs being a lot heavier, and the massive groovetastic whitey-twostep finding its way back into the Sewell songwriting cannon. Less thrash / more Sabbath. Joel Bath is looking for his inner Chuck Biscuits. We're trying to get the album recorded before the end of the year - and released before our East coast tour in the spring.
Oh, and it looks like we've just bought a new BAND VAN! The Joel Bath shaggin' wagon should be on the road any time now.
OK, enough for now. Have to get back to giving things away for free in the social media blogosphere in order to maximize the long tail earning potential of this punk rock band. (Or something like that...)
ADAM / BCxDC
NEW GUITAR PLAYER: As most of you know, we have never kept a solid band line-up when it comes to guitar players. We consist mostly as a group of friends who get together and make a lot of noise. As for our guitarists, if someone is available, they come play a show. If not, then someone else takes their place. It's never been a big deal with us, and it's actually made life very easy for everyone. To date, Junior, Darren, Mike and Justin have all been fantastic to work with, and they're all killer players.
But now that we're ramping things up and planning real tours, energy drink endorsed youth culture events, Youtube live simulcasts from various mega-domes, alt/hipster approved award show afterparty performances, in-studio vlogs, fashion spreads in Burlington-come-Brooklyn-via-Parkdale blogs, and general scenester approved appearances, we figured that we'd better get a more stable line up together. Because if Queen St. W. is confused by your band line up, well then son - you're a nobody in THIS town.
And with all that, we'd like to announce that we've settled on a rather stable line up of guitar players: DARREN QUINN - who many of you already know from his time with Monster Voodoo Machine / Redeemer and of course BCxDC, and the new guy: ADAM ARSENAULT. Adam as some of you may know is the 6 string ass-kicker in Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah. The man shreds, riffs heavy, and has the most crushing guitar sound around. Adam will make his live debut with us Nov. 6 in Toronto. We can't wait to kick it into gear with him.
VIDEO NEWS: Tomorrow night we'll be filming a video for "RADIO SILENCE" with our good friend Michael Lylloff directing. I won't ruin any conceptual surprises for you, but if this goes as planned, it should be killer and something a bit out of the ordinary.
CD RELEASE SHOW: OK, so we wanted to put together a Toronto CD release show for "Year Zero". We weren't sure who to add to the line up (or who would even want to play with us!), but NEVER in our wildest dreams did we think that we'd be able to put together a show like this! BURNING LOVE, CRUX OF AUX and WARCRIMES - HOLY FUCK MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE!! A huge THANK YOU to these 3 bands for playing this one with us. This show is gonna rule.
MERCH: Hey, what's that you say? You want to own a killer new BCxDC shirt?? Well then my friend, why not head over to the brand spankin' new STEREO DYNAMITE ONLINE STORE! Here's the link: http://stereodynamite.bigcartel.com
ALBUM #2: The writing is now well underway for our second album. This one is already shaping up to be a bit different than "Year Zero" with the riffs being a lot heavier, and the massive groovetastic whitey-twostep finding its way back into the Sewell songwriting cannon. Less thrash / more Sabbath. Joel Bath is looking for his inner Chuck Biscuits. We're trying to get the album recorded before the end of the year - and released before our East coast tour in the spring.
Oh, and it looks like we've just bought a new BAND VAN! The Joel Bath shaggin' wagon should be on the road any time now.
OK, enough for now. Have to get back to giving things away for free in the social media blogosphere in order to maximize the long tail earning potential of this punk rock band. (Or something like that...)
ADAM / BCxDC
Monday, October 19, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
"Year Zero" now available at Interpunk.com!
FINALLY - at long last the debut Bastard Child Death Cult album "Year Zero" is available for sale at INTERPUNK.com (Click the link and be taken right to the CD.)
Hurry and get your copy before they're gone!
Hurry and get your copy before they're gone!
Saturday, October 3, 2009
"Year Zero" CDs are in!
The CDs are here! The CDs are here! (And our mothers are all VERY excited and incredibly proud of us.) These 5" discs of pure unbridled punk rawk power will be in Canadian stores within the next 2 weeks via Stereo Dynamite / EMI.
For all of you international folks following along, you can order this epic 25 minute blast of kick-ass fury from our good friends at www.Interpunk.com (We'll have exact online ordering links soon.)
punk IS 99.9999% dead.
Wow, check out this little find. Coincidentally, we have just started writing our new album tentatively titled "Vampires Are The New Ed Hardy".
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