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By Chris Bryson<\/b><\/p>\n
Photo by Thrasher<\/strong><\/p>\n Sheer Mag play with their hearts on their sleeves. The critically acclaimed Philadelphia five-piece\u2019s take on lo-fi hard rock brings riff-laden grooves to anthemic heights, with their lyrical concepts fueled by a steadfast vision for a better world. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Sheer Mag will be coming to Winnipeg with hardcore\/thrash beasts Fury, Red Death, and Power Trip. Although Sheer Mag are stylistically the most ill-fitting of the bunch, their punch nevertheless hits just as hard. Tina Halladay, singer of the band, said they\u2019re excited to finally be doing a non-headlining tour with a bunch of bands that they know. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s just fun to not have to play last every night,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean it\u2019s awesome it\u2019s amazing but it\u2019s going to maybe help to have people who normally wouldn\u2019t see us play maybe do that and just kind of be like a fun, we\u2019d be able to play a shorter set and stuff like that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>A part of what\u2019s made Sheer Mag such a distinct entity is their political and emotional ethos that stands up for the oppressed and misunderstood. With their lyrical concepts and having a female vocalist, the span of their influence goes beyond the reach of their music. \u201cI get young girls coming up to me, also just because you know there\u2019s not tons of women in music,\u201d said Halladay. \u201cEspecially like more aggressive music. Lots of girls come up to me they say they started a band after they saw us. And I think that it\u2019s cool because we do a thing where (Disrupt) J20, the people raising money for the people who got arrested at the protest for inauguration day, they would come out and have a table at a bunch of our tour dates the last time we were on tour. So the fact that we can do things like that is really important.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Halladay knows the importance of being non-judgmental, open-minded, and able to put yourself in another person\u2019s shoes before jumping to conclusions about their behaviour, and many people could benefit from her point of view. \u201cI think any time anyone is open minded and can listen to other people\u2019s perspective is someone that\u2019s worthwhile and kind of deserves to be given a chance to figure out what\u2019s right and the opportunity even if they\u2019ve maybe been blind to certain things in the past or whatever,\u201d explained Halladay.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>She described a situation where she was with some friends who were talking about something offensive a celebrity had said. Halladay remarked that the celebrity \u201cdidn\u2019t come from a place of privilege where she was educated about why what she said wasn\u2019t okay or whatever.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd I just think that people often forget that not everyone comes from an education and background where they can understand all of those things,\u201d Halladay said. \u201cAnd given the chance, some people just need the chance to be explained. Instead of answering in outrage to some things they should be patient and understanding and kind of help educate people who maybe don\u2019t have access to knowing those types of things are offensive or upsetting to people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Sheer Mag\u2019s lo-fi style is one of the defining characteristics of the band\u2019s sound. On their debut full-length,\u00a0<\/span>Need To Feel Your Love<\/span><\/i>, they decided to put a smidge of polish on and threw bits of funk, soul, and disco into the mix. \u201cIt\u2019s all about us and learning, we just got better at what we were doing. So that\u2019s like in taking whatever lesson we learned from past mistakes or whatever and improving on them. I think of course it\u2019ll get a little bit better in production hopefully,\u201d said Halladay. \u201cWe make it sound a certain way on purpose and there\u2019s also parts that are just the limitations of the equipment we\u2019re using and our knowledge on it. So there\u2019s certain things that will always be important to us in how we sound. But there\u2019s also other aspects that are going to improve because we\u2019re getting better at doing it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>For a band on a steady career upswing, Sheer Mag still likes to keep their values close to heart. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a crazy plan, just to continue making music that we think is worthwhile, staying independent and doing things the way we want to, being true to ourselves and making sure our shows are affordable for people who always support us from the beginning, is always important to us,\u201d explained Halladay. \u201cWe have to fight with venues and bookers. I mean we love our booking agent but you know it\u2019s probably frustrating to work with us sometimes because we don\u2019t do things like everyone else does.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Halladay explained how they often fight to keep shows at a reasonable price and have their shirts made in the U.S. to stay away from sweatshop labour, in turn taking less marginal profits in comparison to other bands. Halladay said, \u201cjust trying to keep our morals intact is basically what our main goal is I think. Just practicing what we\u2019re preaching and all that kind of thing.\u201d In a world plagued by as much chaos that it\u2019s currently consumed by, Sheer Mag are one of those still standing up for what they believe in.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Chris Bryson Photo by Thrasher Sheer Mag play with their hearts on their sleeves. The critically acclaimed Philadelphia five-piece\u2019s take on lo-fi hard rock brings riff-laden grooves to anthemic heights, with their lyrical concepts fueled by a steadfast vision for a better world. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1234,567,1235,806,1233,1104],"class_list":["post-11063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-disco-needs-a-squeeze","tag-loud","tag-power-trip","tag-rock","tag-sheer-mag","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11063"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11067,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11063\/revisions\/11067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}