Recovery Child, Burning The Day, Automatic, Fuscia, Koy

El Mocambo – June 28 2007

TJ Liebgott

            Thursday night was a mishmash of rock stylings that over took the upstairs of Toronto’s legendary El Mocambo.  The evening stared off with a pretty sparse crowd as Koy and Fuscia took the stage for an early 8pm start.  For the most part the audience mingled and socialized throughout the club using the two opening bands as a background ambience.  This all went on until Automatic was set to take the stage.

            Everyone seemed to take notice as the house PA system started emitting a slow building “hype track” that seemed to lure everyone that was there to the front of the stage.  Minutes into this epic teaser track the side doors opened to blinding display of industrial strength lighting in which Automatic emerged from and took the stage.  Before even hearing a single riff you know why this band needs such an overdramatic entrance.  The members of Automatic look like they were cryogenically frozen in 1988 and just freshly revived almost 20 years later.  This is definitely a band that “Rocks out with their cocks out”!  By the time the band was played their stadium rock epic song “Sex For The Weekend” it was clear that this band played all balls, no bull rock and the crowd loved every minute of it.

Around midnight Burning The Day took the stage, by which point the audience had filled in somewhat.  BTD exploded the El Mocambo with their hardcore sound with the crowd erupting into fist pounding, moshing and general screams of “Fuck yeah!”.  By the halfway point in the set the moshing had grown to a point that you had no choice of whether or not you wanted to be involved.  Those 40 minutes were a blur of sonic abuse with a sound that drew influences from Black Flag, Ozzy, Metallica and everything in-between and added a “nu-metal” twist.  Frontman Chris Gillespie had no problems stoking the fire of the fans, in-between songs, and could have probably started a riot if he was so inclined.  By the end it was clear whom the crowd wanted to see.

 Late into the evening, around 1 am, Recovery Child took over.  By that time most of the patrons had made there way home.  This was an unfortunate loss to most since Recovery Child still played their hearts out with their no-nonsense rock stylings.  It definitely was a perfect way to end a night at the El Mocambo.