Dush About

A new musical realm is rising on the complex map of modern aggressive music. Staking out new ground amid the countless categories of metal, the sound of bronze—intimate yet epic, fierce yet beautiful—has arrived. Its heralds are the three musical adventurers—the Queen, her Wizard and her Warrior—at the heart of Montreal’s Dush.

The term “bronze” is ideally suited to Dush. Brighter and warmer in appearance than most ordinary metals, bronze is an alloy, a fusion of copper with one or more other, non-metal elements. Likewise, Dush temper their basis in the focus and ferocity of heavy metal and industrial music with components from outside the parameters of the genres—consider the pop inflections in the chorus of “Circles” or the enveloping, mesmerizing mysticism of “Numb.” Moreover, among the physical properties of bronze is its resistance to rust, reflected in the timelessness of their sound. Paradoxically, Dush are absolutely up the minute in their approach to aggressive music, yet at the same time, they draw on melodies and atmospherics that evoke ancient truths, summoning to mind the Bronze Age and the mysteries of the cradle of civilization.

Dush bring their new musical perspectives as strangers in the land they now call home. Singer Mira Solo arrived from Israel in 1992, and started writing music as an antidote to a cultural transplant’s melancholy. Positive reactions from those around her led to soft-rock sets at various little stages around Montreal, where in 2003 she caught the ear of Denis Hagalaz. The two clicked quickly—“You don’t find chemistry like that all the time,” says Solo. The keyboardist of Dush and a Canadian since 1996, Hagalaz’s childhood classical training in his Russian homeland, and a teenage fascination with blues, were followed by busking on street corners and a stretch with a Russian ex-pat bar band. It was with the latter that Hagalaz encountered guitarist Vlad Tomshine, a veteran of the Russian thrash metal scene of the mid-’90s.

A fateful Christmas Day, 2005, saw an open-ended meeting of the three, an informal jam that made the formation of Dush inevitable. “We melted together immediately,” says Tomshine. The band’s moniker chosen for its significance in both Hebrew and Russian, and for its connection to an actual temple in Egypt, reflecting the band’s fascination with the murky depths of history. “I have a thing for ancient… anything,” says Solo. “For some reason, I’m drawn to that.” The three already wrote “Circles” together that very day, a song that became one of the five on their debut, independent EP, Ancient Cities, released in 2008. Dush pushes each of its members to reach farther and challenge their own limits. Tomshine took up the seven-string guitar to expand his sonic scope—“It’s a part of the Dush sound,” he says. Self-taught singer Solo continually discovered new vocal capabilities she didn’t know she had. “The music is very demanding,” says Hagalaz. “Physically,” adds Solo.

Soon enough, Dush were facing their baptism of fire, entering local battle-of-the-band tournaments with a fiercely competitive spirit—their music may be bronze but the three were never content with anything less than the gold medal, snagging the number-one spot when the dust settles. Key to this was crafting a stage show as elaborate and evocative as their music, with attention paid to all aspects—wardrobe and makeup, lighting, pacing, interpersonal dynamics and presentation. “It’s very theatrical,” says Solo of the live show. “We’re trying to be sexual, because we want to attract people to come see our show, and if they can, fantasize about us. Because that’s the most addictive thing about a show, to see something sexy, something that seduces you.” Hagalaz adds to that, “When we come on stage, people’s jaws drop.”

The thoroughness that Dush bring to their show isn’t lacking elsewhere. Every detail of the band’s career, up front and public or behind the scenes, is handled with careful creative thought and professional diligence. “We have the same way of thinking, a clear vision of where we’re going,” says Tomshine. “We aren’t playing for ourselves in our garage, just for fun, drinking beer and whatever. We’ve come from other countries, from the other side of the world, to play music and become something—something big.”