Story by Tony Martins
Character portraits by Robin Hart Hiltz



After a summer of darkness, Angie the Barbarian is happily blinking in the winter light.

Unpaid hydro bills earlier this year meant her Hull house and horror-strewn workshop (self-styled as the Little Shop o' Terrors) were without power. Angie lived “cabin style” and put her music-making on hold.

“At that time I was more preoccupied with dealing with associated things,” Angie told Guerilla.

“Where will I shower? The god damned dishes need to be washed but it's so revolting to do them in icy water! Is the fucking meat in the styrofoam cooler gonna go bad today? Shit ... I forgot to hit the Folie du Dollar for candles! Ha Ha!”

Angie's boisterous and humorous approach to the power outage reveals much about her character: this multi-talented artist rarely lacks for a creative spark or the gumption to see it through.

Now back on the hydro grid, Angie and her Muffler Crunch bandmate Luc Lavigne (Angie on drums and vocals; Lavigne on guitar) are hard at work on a new album that will appear in 2010.







While the last Muffler Crunch release, Arc Welder (2008), offered a blistering set of straight-ahead heavy rock tracks played with no shortage of hellfire, the next recording will attempt to reach a broader range of listeners.

“It's true that we will always be influenced by and rooted in heavy, Melvins-esque type metal,” said Angie, “but we wanted to reign in all that it takes to write the type of songs that both a discerning, snotty music fan and the toothless hillbilly in the corner can relate to.”

“As far as subject matter's concerned, the new shyte ranges from a tune called 'The Day After the Farmer Died' to 'Little Things' to our simplest but perhaps most crude and cutting yet, 'Piggly Wiggly'.”

A playful theatricality at work in Muffler Crunch is rooted in Angie's kick-ass on-stage persona, an aspect of her personality that she recognizes as a character of sorts.

For many years drawn to drama, Angie has formed a strong collaborative relationship with Nick DiGaetano, a founder of Ottawa's celebrated-but-defunct troupe Theatrophy.

After building creepy sets for Theatropy's touring Moribund production, Angie caught DiGaetano's attention again earlier this year when her horrifically intricate diorama pieces were exhibited at SAW Gallery in a show called Band of Outsiders.







“I was in the process of forming a new company and my own aesthetic,” says DeGaetano. “I saw Angie's artwork at SAW Gallery and immediately recognized how well it would mesh with the music I had been writing and the show I had been envisioning.”

DiGaetano is presently developing what Angie calls a “destructo cabaret” titled Tales From the Gasoline Coast, slated to appear some time in 2011.

“Our company, Mi Casa, is dedicated to development and experimentation through cross-disciplinary collaboration,” said DeGaetano, “which basically means that we make it up as we go along. I've been interested in having a visual artist be part of the collaboration who will think about the music visually ... to give us more avenues to explore and broaden our own perceptions of the work.”

Enter Angie, who has been thinking about music visually from a young age.

“My job within this particular production is to create sets, brainstorm on plot here and there, and both invent and physically make some of the warped and oxidized musical instruments that these post-apocalyptic characters might use in their songs of woe,” Angie explains.

“When I was a tween I'd solder nuts and bolts together and make butt ugly jewelery that, to a young stoned grunge fan, seemed cutting-edge at the time,” Angie continues. “Then I moved on to building dioramas and I haven't looked back since. I make my 'Die-O-Ramas' because I have to. My heart forces it. Sometimes I don't eat for a couple days when I'm working on a piece.”







For Angie, art is something that simply happens, not something that she sits and thinks about much. When the closing night gala for Band of Outsiders was held at her place in Hull, Angie was fairly stumped when asked to say a few words about her creative process.

“I didn't know what the hell to say,” she recalls. “I basically told all the people that night that I create because there is so much treasure, and so little time.”

That seize-the-moment philosophy may explain perfectly why Angie is so amped about the return of Muffler Crunch.

“We're planning on hitting legendary clubs again like Barfly in Montreal a hell of a lot this winter, and as well, getting back into the public eye locally.”

The latest incarnation of Muffler Crunch may be getting more theatrical just as Angie does. The band is now refining an epic-length song called “Inner Strength,” first created for a collaboration with Ottawa's native round-dance singers, the Pimadiziwin Singers.

“We basically created a lengthy story about a character who starts as a somewhat douchy, nerdy post-yuppie who hates his predictable life in its absolute entirety and loathes himself as well,” Angie explains.

“Yet all the while he seems to conserve a fearfully healthy ego problem within his soul. By the end, he's gone through a transition which involves him actually becoming a bear—his spirit animal—and is stripped of both his clothes and the bad attitude he's been carrying around like a goiter his whole adult life.”

How does the story end? Just when you think the nerdy post-yuppie dude might be redeemed, things take a dark turn, perfectly in keeping with Angie's surreal theatre.

“He's judged harshly by medicine men and tribal leaders before eventually going to the forest to die in the ether of the spirit world.”


Photography: Robin Hart Hiltz
Make-up: DeeDee Butters
Hair: Amanda Wilbond of Lucas Nault Hair Studio