VAZ
Dying to Meet You (Gold Standard Laboratories)
Reviewed by Holly Day

---

To me, it was the death knell of the music scene here in the Twin Cities when Vaz left Minnesota. They were pretty much the tail end of a lot of cool bands that left town to go to New York or California, and hell, I don't blame them; all the clubs are drying up here, a lot of the recording studios had to close down because they couldn't afford to rent space here anymore, and right now, it's -27 degrees outside.

I seriously considered quitting music journalism when Vaz left, and tried to write for various craft and knitting magazines instead, but that turned out to be unbelievably tedious, and I had to make all the projects I wrote about to make sure the patterns worked, and gosh, do you know how ridiculous those goose-shaped dish soap cozies actually look? I couldn't give those damned things away, and they get dirty so quickly that I ended up tossing the one I made for my own kitchen because it just looked gross, all gray and dripping with blue liquid cleaner.

So anyway, I was very happy to get this Vaz album in the mail, if initially for the nostalgia factor -- and then, after I put it on, happiness ensued again from getting to listen to a really cool album. Vaz, like their early incarnation as Hammerhead (minus the lead singer), is wonderful at mixing apocalyptic lyrics with scary-sounding minor chords, beautifully noisy drums, and this creepy overall feeling that something is just not right with either the song or the musicians behind it. They're just a gorgeously wicked (as in scary-bad, not skater-lingo-wicked)-sounding band, and I wish they'd move back here so I could actually go out and see local music every once in a while without feeling a million years old.

© 2004 - Holly Day