Wax Mannequin

Last week, The Grad Club put on a great show featuring Spiral Beach and Wax Mannequin. Spiral Beach was the headliner, but I was mostly there to see Wax Mannequin, and he did not disappoint.

Wax Mannequin is actually just one dude (real name: Chris Adeney) from Hamilton, Ontario. He's been through Kingston a few times, but I'd never heard his music until I caught one song on CFRC a few weeks ago, at which point I became very interested in seeing this guy live.

His music is pretty unique and very creative, but sort of hard to describe... some of the best efforts at describing his style use phrases like "Tom Waits fronting a viking metal band" or "a rock opera exploding inside your brain". Those are both pretty good descriptors. If "over-the-top" were a genre, this would be it. Judging from the super-intense rock drumming, prog guitar riffs, and gruff high-drama vocals, I think this is probably love-it-or-hate-it music, but since my musical tastes lean pretty heavily towards eclectic craziness, I love it.

Also, the Wax Mannequin MySpace bio is the best rock band biography I've ever read. Here it is, along with the picture referenced therein.

Do you know the painting that you see on some greeting cards where all of the animals are sitting together, stoic and proud in the forest, and there in the background, rising in the sky, it's the earth? You have to ask “why aren't the animals trying to fight and eat each other? They are fucking enemies!” and “why is the earth rising into the sky? If the earth is in the sky, then where the fuck are we?” That shit is Wax Mannequin. Kind of lame... but so important and gripping.