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Kinney returns home for metal show

Kaija Kinney is coming home to growl. Anarcheon is a Vancouver band climbing the jagged broken metal ladder. They are the inventors and promoters of their own festival, Metalocalystick.
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Vancouver-based heavy metal band Anarcheon - bassist Sylvain Maltais, singer Kaija Kinney, guitarist Clayton Bach and drummer Steve Richardo - are playing at the Legion in Prince George on Sept. 2. Kinney is originally from Prince George.

Kaija Kinney is coming home to growl.

Anarcheon is a Vancouver band climbing the jagged broken metal ladder.

They are the inventors and promoters of their own festival, Metalocalystick.

They scored the opening slot for star metal band The Agonist on their Kamloops tour date.

They are building their next EP and album.

And Anarcheon has their own tour of B.C. and Alberta underway right now.

It closes down on Sept. 2 at The Legion in Prince George, Kinney's hometown.

"It'll be our last show so it'll be super tight. Then when it's over, I don't know, I'll cry. I just want to be on the road forever," said Kinney.

Not every band enjoys the road. For some, the deepest thrill is in the creation of the music. Anarcheon definitely enjoys the creative process, but the exchange of fan energy in the writhing theatre of performance is where they are at their happiest.

Plus, some bands are only together for material purposes but Anarcheon enjoys the personal connections of working together on these performances.

"I can't be happier. The dynamics and the chemistry are just awesome," said Kinney.

"We wanted to add a second guitar player but now we don't want to ruin our dynamic. It's so good. And we have a fill-in drummer for the longer tours because our regular drummer can only take so much time off work each year. He's a great friend, everyone gets along, so it's just perfect."

Back at home base, the band has five songs written and rehearsed, ready for the next step which is the recording studio. Kinney said each song is starkly different from the others. It's not a purposeful pose they are striking, but she said variety was almost inevitable from a band rooted in the metal attitude of doing what you want, when you want, and with as much throttle as you want. There is no internal pressure to lock in on one kind of metal and stick to it religiously.

"Honestly, that's the thing we don't want to do and don't care about," Kinney said.

"We don't even know what genre we are. We don't care to name ourselves. People call us melodic death metal, which I'm fine with, I love melodic death metal, but we just want to do what comes out and feels good and natural. We don't want to fit in a box. Because that's boring."

Anarcheon is eschewing labels and genre traits, but they are on the heavier side of metal and Kinney is a practitioner of the vocal style known as clear-and-scream or clean-and-growl. Arch Enemy and The Agonist are other bands who do this. Sometimes the lyrics are sung with plain clarity and other parts of the song get sung from the depths of the singer's core and comes out as a rapier roar.

"I find that clear vocals are harder, just because they have to be so clean and precise, whereas the scream is already scratchy and distorted," Kinney said.

"When I'm on stage I jump around a lot, so I'm usually out of breath for the cleans and I need to be really stable, but when I'm doing the screams it's all in my diaphragm so my movements are actually to (the thunderous pulse) of the song. I'm pushing it out as I'm singing. So it's a lot more controlled, in a weird way."

She tends to write music with only clean vocals in her head, and then when the other members of the band layer in their instruments during rehearsals, she then makes instinctual decisions on when to growl and scream the words.

As much as that sounds shemonic, like someone who rides dragons and beheads orcs for fun, Kinney loves a sweet bellini when she's thirsty.

Again, don't try to paint her and her band into a stereotype corner.

She'll be looking to sip something like that on Sept. 2 when they and three other bands (Kleaver, Hellsmen, 2 Shadows) blend their metal at The Legion.

Tickets are $10, available at the door. It's the first time in Anarcheon's history that Kinney has been able to bring the band to meet the P.G. side of her family (she also lived in Valemount and they have performed there) so a crowd is expected.