The Peculiar Case of Iron Bitchface

by Colin Hunter

Oh, Iron Bitchface, how I love to hate thee...

I had a review in yesterday's issue of The Record of the new album by Iron Bitchface, Kitchener's resident noise-rock offenders (you can read the review here).  The gist of the review was this: the best thing about the album, titled Kitten Apocalypse, is that it's mercifully only seven minutes long.

If you've never heard Iron Bitchface -- and for your sake I pray that's the case -- their "music" can best be described as "not music at all."  You know that wonky eeeeooooeeeeaaaa sound that old dial-up modems make? Imagine that, coupled with the sound of robots being tortured and a howler monkey trying to sing the theme from Carmina Burana, and you've got a rudimentary understanding of what Iron Bitchface sounds like.

The members of Iron Bitchface (essentially one guy, K-Rot, with a changing cadre of other "musicians") readily admit they don't rehearse and haven't got the faintest idea how to play their instruments.

But here's the thing: they have fans. People voluntarily listen to Iron Bitchface.  The evidence: the band has released several albums, a live DVD, and they frequently tour Europe.  No guff. Just the other day, after sending me a copy of Kitten Apocalypse, K-Rot e-mailed me from the Swiss Alps, one of many European tour stops.  Lots of local indie bands start their tours at the Circus Room and end at the Starlight. 

How does Iron Bitchface  (whom I quoted confessing "We don't even try!" in a story I wrote about them last year) achieve even a modicum of success?  Out of pity? Perhaps.  But I think there's more to it: they are different and interesting, two qualities that are sorely missing in a lot of popular music.

On any given day, I would much rather listen to Iron Bitchface than, say, The Tragically Hip, a highly popular band that I find overplayed, overrated, and generally boring.  I lived in a university dorm in the late 1990s, which means I was bombarded by Tragically Hip's brand of blah-rock from every angle. 

I know it's considered a form of treason in Canada to express a dislike for the Hip, and that I shall probably be deported to Guantanamo Bay forthwith. But I'm trying to make a point: bands like Iron Bitchface deserve points for having the courage to be completely different. The represent the opposite extreme of music, counter-balancing for all the bland, interchangeable Top 40 drivel playing in doctors' waiting rooms everywhere.  Great music resides somewhere between the two extremes.

So I'm not saying the music of Iron Bitchface is any good (because really, it's not), but at least the band is making the world a slightly more interesting and unusual place, one gawd-awful seven-minute album at a time.