BEAST @ Club Soda

By Nathaly Arraiz - Two Hours Of Terror - 04/23/2009

Power. To sum up my experience at the latest performance by Montreal's own Beast, they blew me out with their power. My expectations were surpassed by the attitude of their performance. They might be a new band (their first album debuted November 2008) but these guys are no strangers to the stage.

At first it seemed I had walked into a “contemporary-adult” lounge: dimmed red lights and a few defenitely-older-than-me's sitting around the four bars they had set up at Club Soda. Alas, I was an hour early and as the main floor began to fill up, I was reassured. The set up on stage was promising; more laptops and wired gadgets than instruments. From above bare light bulbs hung irregularly echoing the electronic and crude sound I've heard in Beast's songs.

The opening band was bang on appropriate for the crowd, who received them very warmly. Akido features a shaved head femme fatale behind a laptop and keys, a drummer equipped with his own set of gadgets as well as a third guitar/keys/floor tom-ist. They brought on nice textures over the crowd, but honestly I kept waiting for wave to crash, maybe with some breathtaking singing! Or then again I was probably just anxious to see Beast and hear Betty.

When they did get onstage, Beast got right into it. You could see in [lead singer] Betty Bonifassi's face that she knew, and got a kick from knowing, the crowd was cheering for her as she walked out just before she had to sing. She was dressed like a rockstar and gradually after each song she peeled off parts of her outfit as the show got heated. On the drums, Jean-Phi Goncalves could barely stay in his seat he was playing so hard. Usually Beast refers to these two great musicians but onstage they also had a keybassist (that is a dude playing a bass with a keyboard stuck to it) and a guitarist. And at the right time, they even had back up singers popping out from behind some curtains on the back of the stage.

Not only was the music pumping, but the visuals they had going really added to the spectacle as a whole. Each song had its own look created onstage with projections, videos, and lights. One of the first was for the song “City” in which a skyline projection rose through the crowd's heads, through the band and onto the wall behind them. There was also a hair raising moment when after a loud and bright build up, everything went quiet and dark and all projections focused on Betty's body, where for a moment she was covered with bees.

We were clapping, yelling and even had a call and response thing going with Betty. Both she and Jean-Phi interacted plenty with the crowd. But one of my favourite moments was Jean-Phi's amazing solo. He first rocked out DJ style with his beats and transferred that onto the drums too. When they got offstage, as expected, it was full volume yelling until they got back on, which didn't take that long. Man, do Beast know how to deliver an encore. They saved their grooviest, most party-filled song for last, “Satan”. They started with a little dance, supported by the audience's clapping and then they both started rapping. The rest of the Beast crew joined in later with tambourines, it was really fun. It was just the best way to close a rocking good concert.