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Montreal officially dubbed a metal music city

Click to play video: 'Recognizing Montreal’s heavy metal music scene'
Recognizing Montreal’s heavy metal music scene
Montreal City Councillor Craig Sauvé is tabling a motion to have Montreal's heavy metal scene recognized. Sauvé says Montreal's influential heavy metal artists are renowned across Canada and deserve to shine. Global's Billy Shields explains – Apr 15, 2019

Montreal City Coun. Craig Sauvé gets excited when he talks Montreal metal bands.

At city council meeting on Monday he brought compact discs from Cryptopsy (“classic” metal, according to him), Necrotic Mutation (originally from Rimouski) and Despised Icon.

Sauvé successfully pushed through a formal declaration making Montreal a “heavy metal city.” He also managed to gain bipartisan support for it.

“That’s the magic of metal,” he said, laughing.

The designation may not necessarily end up being purely symbolic, either.

“Everybody knows that Montreal is an international music city, but by declaring it we are getting national and international press,” said Jimmy Kay, who operates a YouTube channel with called The Metal Voice. It has more than 11,000 followers worldwide.

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READ MORE: It’s time Montreal is officially dubbed a heavy metal city: councillor

Kay points out a strange phenomenon with many Montreal-area acts — they may be unknown in their home city but wildly popular in Japan or countries in Europe. The designation could serve to change that, with the additional attention the city’s band could have.

“This international press is costing us nothing,” Kay said.

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