#23 R.I.P. Soybomb

The connections are there.

Nov 28, 2024

Some housekeeping… Eight weeks of every other week. It’s almost like you can expect this thing. Crazy. Got some ideas for it, but am always open to hear what people want to read. This one’s got a bit too much nostalgia. Music and listings towards the bottom. On to it!

This Saturday marks the last show at Soybomb. It’s a strange sentence to write given that Soybomb hasn’t really been a place for shows in many years.

While people have lived there since, its original “closure” followed a 4chan / alt-right international wave of harassment that came in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire in 2016. Places like Soybomb, that were seen as friendly to queer & trans folks and operating outside of municipal regulations, were identified and ratted on by people far too cowardly to ever show face. A symbolic reminder that what we do really does need to be secret sometimes.

Soybomb is perhaps, at this point, the last vestige of an old version of Toronto. A relic of a hollowed out industrial downtown that could be overrun by the good things; empty, underused spaces and a small group of willing alchemists, capable of turning them into a vibrant and transgressive nightlife.

Warehouses and former factories used to dot our downtown. Each glass and concrete condo now a monument to what was. And so will go Soybomb, a building whose history is as connected to diy punk culture in the 2010s as it is to the 1990s, what with some of Bruce LaBruce’s “Super 8 1/2” being filmed there too, among other things.

But this isn’t meant to be an obituary, so much as a reminder. Once this place didn’t exist, then it did, then it didn’t, then it did again. There is a future.

I stumbled into booking shows at Soybomb sometime around 2011, though the beginnings of this iteration precede that. While I was aware of its existence through a now long lost friend involved in its early days, it was home to a different scene than the hardcore punk one I was travelling in. Yet that didn’t make it any less of a perfect home for an after party to the inaugural Not Dead Yet in 2011.

Jay was kind enough to entertain the idea. A kinship was forged. A reminder that while you may not be into all the same records or shows as someone, there are vital ideas across the best ones that can make you easy friends. His willingness to open his spot to NDY afforded us the opportunity to run after parties featuring bands from all over the world for just $5 cash at the door or your ability to scale a drain pipe at the back.

I remember holding together Lexton’s drum kit during Una Bestia Incontrolable’s surprise set in 2015, fearing the floor was going to cave in, or someone offering a dumpster-dived grocery store cake in lieu of admission or Riley Gale befriending an angry clown during a 4am Jock Club set. There was the first Merchandise show in Toronto, Iron Lung & Column of Heaven, Hank Wood… the list goes on. And that’s just what I remember.

The rooftop was particularly out of this world. To climb out of the ceiling and feel like you could be lawless at the foot of the city is a feeling now hardly replicable.

To say it plainly, Soybomb was special. Another shining example of a simple room run by people who believed there was an alternative and were willing to build it. Another one lost to a developer’s desire for an increased price per square foot. Soybomb was a conduit through which our city became more internationally connected. In its heyday it was without a doubt Toronto’s most recognizable diy venue internationally, and bands were always excited at the prospect of getting to play there.

No reason for despair though. The world will always provide enemies, and the folks at Soybomb put up a valiant fight to keep their home. As long as we find means to support each other and our crazy ideas, the next Soybomb is just around the corner. A scene is not its venues. It’s its people and their willingness to imagine.

The final Soybomb gig is this Saturday. New Friends DIY are hosting. Animal Faces are reuniting. And that shit is sold out! There are other events this week, but you better get your ear to the ground for that.

On that note, on support and imagination, an old friend of Not Dead Yet is presently sitting in solitary confinement in the UK over political actions in opposition to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. This person’s home had always been open to bands moving through their city. A supportive hub filled with records and other crazy music freaks, always a cup of tea on offer. Another node in the network that enables the same creativity that was on display at Soybomb.

Perhaps lost in hardcore’s post Covid hype and the follow-unfollow rhythm of everything-as-fodder social media is that there are bands, people and places that are all connected.

These connective tissues allow hardcore to become a lens through which you can come to better understand the world. These rooms, these homes are representations of the music’s underlying ideal. If we believe in our ability to make change, if we support each other, things become greater than the sum of their parts.

On that note, if you are able to, you can donate to Palestine Action’s legal fight here.

On the Playlist

Another grip of excellent music for you this week added to the playlist. Some brilliant jangle pop from THE LAUGHING TIMES’ upcoming effort. A track off the under the radar heater that is the MOLINA LP - a self titled effort from ML BUCH’s main live collaborator. There’s the title track from the new EROS record, serious throb from true professionals.

NUKIES provide some proper Swedish D-Beat. There’s also some brutal noise from IGNORANCE, a cut from SPEED PLANS’ latest on Convulse, which will hopefully re-wire some brains, and a song off of the SECOND DEATH record, picking up very firmly where PERMISSION and before them, NO, left off. Ralph Simmonds - guitar legend.

We’ve got GAG’s cover of Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy,” an absurdist feat that perhaps only GAG could tackle. Some more nu-gaze from Minneapolis’ WISHY, as well as some of that Mikey Young magic from THE GREEN CHILD.

Not on Streaming

This is a fun one. Outsider pop magic on UK label INFOrmatioN! Cutting from a similar out-there cloth as the likes of The Television Personalities comes THE LIVING RAINBOW. Bedroom pop brilliance - the kind you have to be a little bit cuckoo to make. Xylophones? Aging keys? Jingle Jangle? A hardly tuned guitar? Perfect.