Team Sleep @ Opera House Show review
Written July 5, 2005

It all began when a rooster ran in front of Popular Jackie's car on University Ave. Ka-cluck! Stupid combed head bobbing, the cock strutted out proudly into oncoming traffic (us) before turning to desperately flee his impending doom at the very last second. I leaned out the window and screeched at him: "BU-CAAAAAAAAW!" A warning shot! What the hell was a rooster doing in Waterloo , anyways?

We were en route to Toronto , to the Opera House, where Chino Moreno of Deftones fame was currently parked. The name on our tickets said Team Sleep - Chino 's softcore side project, much like A Perfect Circle was Maynard James Keenan's - but let's face it: Chino was the main attraction. And no puffed-up suicidal rooster was going to keep us from him. Popular Jackie was seriously contemplating rape.

We breezed into Toronto and found free parking, a feat I considered just short of miraculous. Waiting on the corner opposite the diminutive Opera House, I examined the tour bus and considered the pre-show orgies probably underway within. The dim flicker of candlelight in the window betrayed sensual fucking; Popular Jackie died of jealousy.

The crowd siphoning in and out of the smoking area was fairly diverse - an interesting mix of snarky hipsters, mainstream metalheads and a shitload of kids in Deftones shirts. They clearly had hard-ons for Chino, just like us. A few fogies dotted the landscape: the show was not sold out and I'm sure a couple wandered in out of boredom.

Jackie's tiny friend arrived and we headed inside after being patted down and thoroughly examined for weed (of which we had none, thankfully). I was surprised at the level of security. The Opera House is a dingy, humid place with pretences of grandeur and class. Air ducts rattle and vibrate; the rafters groan as the decibels rise. It is a dying venue.

We had tactfully planned to arrive just as Team Sleep went on at 10:00 , but predictable show shenanigans saw the opening act still on stage. Two very-berry-emo fellows were rocking out, dancing and gyrating erratically in a way that very much reminded me, hilariously enough, of our friend the Street Rooster. One rooster played the guitar and screamed while the other rooster swung his mic around and sang sweetly. A drum machine provided the bass and beatz. After each song, mic rooster offered weak nu-politikal banter about President W while guitar rooster played with his electronics - sadly enough, the bass loop sounded identical for every single track, so I don't really know what the fuck he was up to. I got bored and left to smoke midway through their set and never found out what the rooster crew called themselves. It's probably for the best.

Team Sleep finally shambled onto the scene at about 11:00 to moderate applause and worshipful cries of " Chino!" The Man Himself was underdressed and not very fat - not nearly as fat as Chino in the Deftones' "Back To School" video, for instance. Unchunky Chino was accompanied by a bored-looking guitarist, a bored-looking bass player, a DJ and a wild beast of a drummer. For the first two songs, the drummer went nuts on his kit but the rhythm seemed a bit ungainly. Things didn't sync. I found myself watching the giant movies projected behind the band: indie clips of softcore porn and crazyinsane suicidal girls with razor blades. Weird for the sake of weird.

The band hit their groove and quickly tightened up. The movies got sillier and sillier - scenes from Blade Runner blended into demented Japanese satan-cats blended into stop-motion footage of Medusa stonifying Greek warriors. I looked for correlation between the films and Team Sleep's soundtrack and found nothing that made any sense.

Team Sleep was virtually stationary on stage until "King Diamond", where Chino proceeded to don his hood and bust some freestyle. I will never forget the image of dozens of indie kids throwing their hands up in the air for a rapping, bouncing Chino. It was like a dirty parody of 8 Mile. "King Diamond" was made all the more bizarre by the glaring lack of female voice samples which, in my opinion, make the song. In fact, Team Sleep's entire set consistently felt (to me) like it was missing some of the ambience that fills the album; stripped down to guitars and core vocals, many songs suffer.

Chino 's voice, however, was in golden shape. I've heard, in the past, that he sings ragged and raw at Deftones shows - this night he was totally fucking on, with the possible exception of his rap skillz. "Ataraxia" in particular, and "Princeton Review", were solid.

The crowd seemed confused by the feast laid before them. Team Sleep is too mellow to mosh to; too ground-vibratingly noisy to ignore. Shifting tempos even make it hard to keep a head-nodding beat. The band did not deign to play any covers or even talk much, choosing instead to rip through most of the songs on their self-titled debut one after another. The entire thing was minimalist and Team Sleep went through the motions of a 2-song encore, following a raucous drum solo. The vast majority of the crowd didn't appear to care whether Chino & Co. retook the stage.

Popular Jackie returned from the bathroom with stories of riotous splash-vomiting and we escaped as the house lights came up. Our dreams of touching Chino were unfulfilled and my opinion of the show was confused: the band was good, the band was meh. The band was a low-key enigma. The band could've been better.

Leaving the Opera House behind us, we went to pick up three of Popular Jackie's friends who were suffering from the aftereffects of 11 straight hours of growl-metal (Opeth, Lamb of God, etc.) at Sounds of the Underground. They went for pizza and I talked about the internet's power to equalize with a homeless man outside. On the drive home, I watched carefully for roosters but all the local chickens were evidently either asleep or at KFC. White lines on the highway painted our roosterless route home.

Reviews are more fun when you don't have a word limit (or censors!).