Though inspired by the shocking iconography of horror shows, slasher flicks, and psychological thrillers, Bonnie Trash (led by twin sisters Emmalia and Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor) turns cinematic tropes on their head. Rather than fashioning nightmares into reality, the band paints reality as a nightmare, rife with pain, suffering, and gothic theatre. Like their forebears Joy Division, Black Sabbath, or John Carpenter, Bonnie Trash understands that everyday atrocities haunt the periphery of our lives. A black cloud looming on the edge of our vision. Curses abound. You can‘t ward them off. You‘d best make an unholy racket. Where their first full length, Malocchio, shrouded Bonnie Trash‘s nightmares in dusky dreamlike reverb, Mourning You is vivid and immediate. Emboldened by the additionof Emma Howarth-Withers on bass and Dana Bellamy on drums – whose thunderous rhythms sharpened 2024's My Love Remains the Same EP into a fine-edged blade – Mourning You is less a post-mortem fantasia than asudden, swift dagger to the heart. This is sorrow not as a lingering bruise, but a gushing wound.
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Drift Motel is an independent band from St. Catharines, crafting melancholy dream pop and post-punk rooted in nostalgic lo-fi memories. The band consists of Jon Rahman (rhythm guitar and vocals), Stuart Smith (drums), Chase Chappell (lead guitar), and Joel Tassillo (bass). Recording and producing from their home studio, Drift Motel released their debut single, "Undying Dream," in the summer of 2025, followed by their first three-track EP, Become The Caretaker, later that November.
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Scrape the scum and grime off the floors of every bar and basement in so-called Toronto that dared host a mob of unruly hardcore kids or sweaty, undulating goths and you get Dermabrasion — in sound and spirit. The duo have peddled their fleshy post-punk-metal in and around their home town with a deceptively ferocious live show that has landed them supporting slots for the likes of KORN, Gojira, TRAITRS, Lydia Lunch Retrovirus, Special Interest, Pixel Grip, Nox Novacula, Vision Video and Front 242’s Patrick Codenys. Dermabrasion’s 2021 demo EP Lunate marked a return to form for members Adam Bernhardt and Kat McGouran who started writing and performing together in 2015 with defunct Toronto punk band WLMRT. The five tracks on Lunate with a low-fi production that smacks of early Sisters of Mercy recordings offered only a haunting, shadowy outline of what the pair now bring forward with their full-length debut, Pain Behaviour. Released on Toronto’s Hand Drawn Dracula in 2024, debut album Pain Behaviour chews up and spits out sonic motifs across ten tracks that piece together a collection of influences reflecting the years both musicians have spent skulking around their city’s nightlife. The beer-flavoured ghouls smoking outside venues that no longer exist; the backed-up toilet smell hanging in the nightclub air together with fog, lasers and Siouxsie.
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With guests Mitten