Beliefs

Judging by all the Fender Jazzmasters on stage, Toronto-based fuzz-rock quintet Beliefs never met a My Bloody Valentine b-side they didn't like or an amp they didn't want to distort. Dressed in camo fatigues and skinny black trousers, head honcho Josh Korody put the "shoegaze" in shoegazing early on, staring at his feet with head hung low as the band began their intimate evening performance. Although stopping after the first track, concerned the band were sounding like shit, after a few audience members convinced them otherwise and blamed the monitors for all the confusion, the group began to warm up to the Handlebar's sizeable crowd. As indicator lights blinked away to the band's swirling reverb and growing distortion, fellow rhythm guitarist Jesse Crowe took the occasional break from delivering splashy chords to provide aggressive tremolo picking and ferocious solos, while the rhythm section stayed tight with lean bass lines and pummelling drums. Ending their set as any good slowcore-indebted five-piece would, the band dropped to their pedals to crank up the delay and feedback and quickly got out before the crowd knew what hit them.