KEANU REEVES LOVES METZ, RECALLS GETTING “KILLED” AT MILWAUKEE METAL FEST via Revolver Mag
Amid building excitement around Bill & Ted 3 and the imminent new John Wick shoot ’em up — not to forget the recent viral video involving an emergency plane landing and an impromptu group road trip home — Keanu Reeves is the subject of an excellent, in-depth GQ profile, touching on everything from his iconic movies (River’s Edge, The Matrix, etc.) to his much-derided grunge band Dogstar, in which he played bass. Reeves looks back with affection, zeroing in on one exceptionally disastrous yet awesome gig at Milwaukee Metal Fest.
“We played Milwaukee Metal Fest. Got killed. I think we played close to Murphy’s Law. Imagine. So we played a Grateful Dead cover, at Milwaukee Metal Fest,” the actor recalls. GQ points out Dogstar not only played after Murphy’s Law, Agnostic Front and the Mentors, but also before Cannibal Corpse, Obituary, Deicide, and “a band that was just called Cancer.”
“We were like, ‘They hate us. What are we doing here? What can we do? Let’s do the Grateful Dead cover,’ ” Reeves says in the story, with a laugh. “They were just like, Fuck you, you suck. I had the biggest grin on my face, man.”
On the subject of what music he’s into now, Reeves admits to being pretty out of touch with current artists. The article notes that he’s “probably the only billion-dollar-grossing movie star to have once listed Steve Albini’s confrontational ’80s noise-terror band, Big Black, as a current fave. When he’s reminded of this, he lets out a quiet nonverbal dinosaur howl—raaaaaahhhh—and does a little Ted Logan air guitar.”
Considering Reeves’ continuing Big Black fandom, it makes perfect sense that the one new-ish band that he does cite is Canadian noise-rock crew METZ, who sound not unlike an equally fucked-up in-bred cousin to Steve Albini’s confrontational Eighties band. (Albini not coincidentally produced METZ’s last album, 2017’s Strange Peace.) The GQ article says of Reeves: “He doesn’t listen to as much new music as he used to. Hasn’t gotten heavy into a new band since he discovered METZ, an abrasive Toronto punk group whose songs have titles like ‘Escalator Teeth’ and ‘Mess of Wires.'”
To which we can only respond: Whoa. METZ, if you’re unfamiliar, fucking rock — check out their song “Cellophane” below:
