cleopatrick are a Canadian rock duo from Ontario, Canada, comprised of Luke Gruntz and Ian Fraser as a gritty guitar / drums combination. They’ve been laying down crushing rock songs since they debuted nearly ten years ago, but have recently branched out with their newest album FAKE MOON.

‘GOOD GRIEF’ was a staple song that brought the thunder, and set the tone for the Institute’s sweaty basement room. Quickly following was ‘OK’ from cleopatrick’s fourth EP, DOOM, and ‘HAMMER’ from their most recent album, FAKE MOON. Gruntz was particularly good at working the crowd, praising “the great people of Birming-ham’ in typical North-American annunciation.

‘THE DRAKE’ was a particularly strong song from their first album, BUMMER, and really encapsulates the dirty rock genre the band is known for, especially in cleopatrick’s early days. Midway through the set, we were treated to the triple threat of ‘hometown’, ‘bernard trigger’, and ‘sanjake’. The outro for ‘bernard trigger’ saw an instrument swap from the pair, further laying on the theatrics.

cleopatrick are known for their brutal sound, often being compared to bands such as Royal Blood – an apt comparison considering the two piece nature of both bands. But with two instruments comes limitations, and with their new album FAKE MOON, the pair have called upon other instruments to bring their songs to new heights.

All respect to cleopatrick for attempting to reimagine their sound, however it could have done with a little fine-tuning. Perhaps it is just because the dirty rock sound is one they have championed so well for so long, but the tracks from FAKE MOON just didn’t achieve the same feelings as bangers such as their finale ‘FAMILY VAN’. The slower, more wistful sound, with layers of distorted guitar, and most notably an autotuner for some tracks, have created a borderline shoegaze-y sound — gone is the booming overdrive and crash drums.

To be clear, the FAKE MOON tracks were not bad by any means: ‘BAD GUY’ has quickly become a staple of cleopatrick’s new direction, and ‘LOVE YOU’ was a mellow way to begin the end of their set. It just created a lot of whiplash when cleopatrick went from old to new songs, and changed entire genres in the process.

FAKE MOON is a brilliant new album that I would highly recommend listening to, however it stands in such stark contrast to the rest of the cleopatrick’s discography, that listening to BUMMER right after FAKE MOON might have you thinking you started listening to a completely new band.

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