IN CONCERT
Anciients with Black Wizard, The Shrine, and Dirty Fences
When: Saturday, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Logan’s Pub (1821 Cook St.)
Tickets: $10 at Cavity Curiosity Shop (556b Pandora Ave.); $15 at the door
Chris Dyck spent the better part of a year preparing his metal quartet, Anciients, for its eventual arrival.
It was a well-planned period of sequestration that consisted mostly of writing and rehearsing. By the time his creative woodshedding process was up, and the group had finally played its first show, the bearded singer-guitarist had in his back pocket one beast of a band.
Anciients is now ready to be awakened for good. “We jammed for a year before we even played one live show,” Dyck, 35, said from his home in Mission.
“When we came out, we had everything sussed out — what we wanted to do, what we wanted to sound like, where the imagery was going. We didn’t jump the gun. We had a plan.”
If his plan was to make an impact on arrival, it was masterfully choreographed.
The adept prog-metal quartet — a combination of Mastodon and Baroness, with elements of everyone from High on Fire to Opeth — is one of the most buzzed-about acts coming out of Vancouver at the moment, a standing that should improve greatly once Anciient’s long-awaited debut, Heart of Oak, arrives April 16.
It is a fine time to be a metal band in Vancouver, it would appear. The city’s heavy-music scene has been growing steadily for years, and Dyck had played a part in its development. He co-manages Vancouver promotions company Nothing is Heavy, which he uses it as a way to “shine a light” on a bustling mainland music scene.
According to Dyck, everything from psychedelic rock to death metal is taking off in Vancouver of late. “Vancouver is killing it right now, as far as heavy music is concerned. First it was Black Mountain and 3 Inches of Blood, then it was Bison, and now Baptists are all over the place and Archspire just got signed. There’s even a lot of cool bands from Vancouver that are huge in a cult-ish kind of way, like Haggatha and Mass Grave.”
Add the riff-tastic Anciients to that ever-expanding list. The band has yet to release a full album of music, and already it is being written up in publications ranging from Pitchfork to Guitar World. The group has officially issued just two songs to date, and even those are closing in on two years old at this point, Dyck said.
All of which begs the question: How does a new group with little in the way of recorded music snag a series of top-tier opening slots and high-profile festival appearances, all the while doing its best to stay largely out of the public eye?
It’s a matter of quality, according to Dyck.
It also helps that Anciients members Kenneth Paul Cook (guitar, vocals), Aaron “Boon” Gustafson (bass) and Mike Hannay (drums) have all spent time in various Vancouver bands over the years. Cook, Gustafson and Dyck played together in SprëadEagle, a popular Vancouver group before its demise, while Hannay did time in Mammoth and M16.
Dues have definitely been paid, Dyck said. “I was 17 when I played my first show,” he said.
There’s also a different mindset at play. All four Anciients members hail from regions outside of Vancouver proper, with most calling the Fraser Valley home to this day. The fact that Dyck and Cook are from Mission, Gustafson is from Langley and Hannay is from Chilliwack has given the group a unique outlook on life.
“I love living outside the city. I love working in the city, and visiting it as much as I do. But here there’s more green space, farmland, and it’s wide open. You’ve got to have a car to get places, because transit doesn’t run all hours of the night. It’s a suburb, but it’s a little more rural.”
Living without the roar of a city in your backyard gave Anciients the time it needed to get their music right. That was an important part of the learning process, given the difficult and technical playing heard on Heart of Oak. “A big part of it is the challenge,” Dyck said of the recording, which he feels bridges the gap between classic rock and black metal.
“For me, that’s the whole point of the band. If you’re not doing something new, shut the f--k up.”
