#szeryk

[minorleaguelegends]

Jeff Szeryk vs Barry Potomski

Jeff Szeryk vs Barry Potomski

Windsor Spitfires vs London Knights OHL

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[toiletbands]

SZERYK: oh my your solo is so big

The bathroom at the ‘London Music Hall’ is very well lit; you can see the yellowing caulking and the half assed scrubs of the immigrant cleaning woman who didn’t even bother to get rid of the greasy soap scum at the bottom of the drain. The worst part by far is the sickly white light. I’m sure you won’t have too much trouble finding the veins in your scrotal sack to inject smack into, but there would be no pleasure from a furtive coupling, awkward unsatisfying oral sex, or urinating on friends who had far too much to drink. Not the kind of bathroom I’d like to spend much time in, the whole thing is ruined by 100W Florescent bulbs that hum like retarded angels.     The walls are covered by flakes of stubborn glue from band stickers recently removed.   Only one remained.

Rosie (as the immigrant bathroom cleaning woman will be called) saw this sticker, said ‘my god, the sheer minimalism and the FUTURISTIC font of this sticker means that it needs to be preserved like some sort of freakish relic of the past’. And so Rosie saved it for wandering scribes such as myself and the dude scratched out www.szeryk.com and a hastily pencilled in FU. Because ‘Fuck you’ was too much effort for a first draft.

SZERYK sounds like what would happen if the world was forever stuck in 1979. The music consists of utterly bland and souless guitar solos arranged in ways that only loosely resemble songs. Unlike most bands we review, this guy actually has technical chops with the guitar, hell he even managed to jerk off in front of thousands of people at the Air Canada Centre.

The problem with his music is the same problem with every group that values technical skills over being interesting (See: Dragonforce, everything Dillinger Escape Plan did after Calculating Infinity, the entire genre of Progressive Rock/Metal).   Rock has this inbuilt inferiority regarding ‘Classical music’ that bands like this try to compensate for. Classical music idealizes musicians striving towards being utterly perfect yet individual while playing a piece that is ‘timeless’ *Yawn* Playing an instrument this well is great if you dream about being like some dead wanker like Schumann but really, who gives a fuck these days?

If Schumann really was that good, wouldn’t I care about him? but I don’t. Therefore he must have been a boring asshole. Music? Music is a Japanese man screaming incomprehensibly as he hurls sheets of glass at you. Why? because he is being the best god damn angry Japanese man he can be. Don’t question the purity of the expression with you ‘rules’ and your ‘safety’ and your ‘well that man may have mental problems’.

When I listen to Szeryk I hear nothing but artifice, the real feeling, the raw emotions that music should root itself in is obscured by solos that serve no purpose but to exist. What do they tell us? Do they convey a story? Is there anything new or interesting? or is this simply derivative of the most derivative rock groups that the 70s and 80s produced? All the solos show off is what he can do. Great job, but music isn’t the Olympics, I don’t give a shit that you can finger fuck a guitar faster than the next wanker. Szeryk is apparently a guitar instructor- for all I know he might even be a decent human being, but it goes to show exactly why guitar teachers aren’t usually very good musicians. The focus on technicality dulls the emphasis on feeling, experience and expression. Which leads to boring, inoffensive crap. Strongly not recommended.