CPC Gangbangs / Hot Live Guys / Kasper Hauser

Montreal noise punk fiends CPC Gangbangs were greeted with a strong turnout of fans on their first trek through Winnipeg. Kaspar Hauser kicked off the night with a solid set, delivering spot-on versions of Testors, Hüsker Dü and Radio Birdman tunes. Hot Live Guys followed and gave a frantic performance that saw the group maintaining a relentless level of energy as they tore through songs from their Robbin’ A Bank EP, along with other material. Guitarist Joe Warkentin ran back and forth across the stage and then spent almost as much time tumbling through the crowd. For their first Winnipeg appearance, Montreal’s CPC Gangbangs gave a wonderfully bruising performance. The last time members Roy "Choyce” Vucino and Danny "Colonel Lingus” Marks played in Winnipeg, with former band Les Sexareenos, pint-sized celeb Christina Ricci cut a rug on the dance floor. While this evening lacked star-studded cameos, the CPC crew still churned out a mean barrage of noise punk. Opening with the jugular-attacking anthem "Teenage Crimewave,” the band blitzed through an abbreviated, muscular collection of songs. Despite being trimmed down to a three-piece with Paul Spence absent from the line-up, the band dished out tall waves of sound. Vucino howled away and sashayed across the stage while Marks hammered away with extreme precision. An extended version of "Jeff Starship” saw the group spinning their slow, bass-driven groove into a wall-rattling hypnotic dirge. Elsewhere, CPC put the pedal down and powered through a turbo-charged take on "Mechanical Man” from their awesome debut full-length, Mutilation Nation. The group also dipped into a few new songs that proved to be just as brilliantly noisy and tuneful, but the set concluded all too quickly, leaving fans eager for another dose of CPC.