WHIMM – NXNE -The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto – June 18, 2015

Review by Andrew Horan

When Toronto noise rockers WHIMM hit the stage, a last minute sound check led into their first song. Or it might have just been the intro to their first song.

The jangly guitar sound, combined with frontman Chris’ hypnotic vocals did create an interesting droning sound, even though the band’s songs did go on for a bit too long. Whether it was due to the epic nature of their songs or shyness, the band didn’t really make much of an effort to engage the audience. They still managed to attract a sizable crowd despite being in the dreaded, “first band on” time slot with people slowly trickling in.

This really showed when the second song abruptly led into the second, a number that was the aural equivalent of being in a thunder storm that saw the band making frequent time shifts. In fact, you would have been forgiven for thinking they were playing a different song.

They used echoing effect to good effect on a couple songs and at one point, played a MBV-esque wall of sound that was a few decibels quieter than the Irish shoegaze band’s infamous, “holocaust section” at the beginning of a Mission of Burma-influenced punk song.

There’s no denying that the three piece are talented, they drew forth a variety of sounds from a simple combination of guitar, bass and drums but they only played a half dozen songs and left the stage rather abruptly without so much as a, “Thank you”.

WHIMM has the chops, the rhythm section showed this to great effect on one of the last songs with the guitar tolling like a bell, but their indifference towards the audience was a bit off-putting. The somewhat murky sound didn’t help matters any and the vocals were hard to make out at times.