Category: Music

While looking up pictures of garthim I found this website: http://www.retrojunk.com/details_articles/968/ which is hilarious.

The reason I was looking at pictures of garthim is because as many of you know The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets have been re-invited to the Penny Arcade Expo after bailing at the last minute a couple years ago. (I should never forgive Bob for that but who can stay mad at this face?)

To that end, I’ve been thinking about making myself a new costume. I’ve always wanted to do something crustacean-like but it would be incredibly hard to perform in (not that that has ever stopped me before) and I think it would complicate border-crossing. So now I’m thinking about recreating an old costume which I really like – essentially it was a set of coveralls that had a bunch of plastic garden chains and shower curtain rings (spray painted to look metal – in all senses of the word) and a helmet with a transparent vacuum hose on it. I miss those days of going to the thrift store and finding kooky things to make into Thickets costumes, perhaps I should revisit that chapter of my life, and I bet Best would help!

Here’s the old version:

Perhaps it’s time to take a stroll down Thickets costume lane. You can click on the pics to enlarge.

I wish I had a photo of my TIE Fighter helmet. It’s not a helmet a TIE Fighter would wear – it’s a helmet that looks like a TIE Fighter.

I am in this rock band, you see, and we’re into H.P. Lovecraft. In one of these you can see my shantak costume.

Photos from our gig on Sep 1 2007 at the Media Club with THOR!

by Adam PW Smith

by Adam Smith

Mario by Adam Smith

by Adam Smith

by Greg

I know that Taylor took some photos too but I don’t know where to look for them anymore.

Here’s the review from the current issue of THE NERVE

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
“The Shadow Out of Tim”
Divine Industries
A concept album! An amazing collection of joyously whacko rock from another new favourite Vancouver band for all of us to collapse before, weeping in abject joy. It would seem as if the deepest boroughs of the Lower Mainland (namely Abbotsford) continue to show Vancouverites how thoughtful, whimsical, and powerful prog-pop can be, and few Canadian bands can stand up to The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets when it comes to that stuff. The album’s theme and concept deals with an unwitting marine biologist raising Lovecraftian horrors from the blackened depths of the sea…I think. The research ship gets hijacked by cultists off the coast of New Zealand, people die horribly, minds are lost to the madness of the interstellar gulfs, yeti appear; all sorts of good shit if you ever read Clark Ashton Smith fantasies while you played Greenslade in the background. There’s even a song of Cthulhu mythos (“Nyarlathotep,” of course) sung in I’m-not-kidding Middle Egyptian! Jesus. A handy glossary of unfamiliar terms caps off the lyric sheet; helpful, these Thickets. Just when I think there’s nothing left in rock, I get reawakened and hope burns anew. And I haven’t even started in on these guys’ unparalleled live show. Enjoy this album.
-Ferdy Belland

This is a good review, and not just because it’s a POSITIVE review. Even though some of the dots aren’t connected, it’s clear that this guy gets us. He (or she) gets the fact that this is a narrative, and that the evil is tongue-in-cheek, and that it’s supposed to be fun. It’s clear he doesn’t know the band THAT well (“EVEN a song about the Cthulhu mythos”? – They’re MAINLY about the Cthulhu mythos), but he gets the gist of it. I think this is the first review that affirms to me that the album can appeal to the layman, not just the tried-and-true veteran Thickets fan who knows the name of the cat from HPL’s “The Rats in the Walls.” This means I did what I set out to do. Yay!

I need to start a tally of all the sub-genres in which The Thickets have been classified.
Surf Punk
Power Pop
Nerdcore
Prog-pop!