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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.ca Pumping
those heavy metal deities, Motörhead, in a book's acknowledgements is a
warning shot of ensuing literary damage, and Yashin Blake's debut novel, Titanium Punch, a hell-raising homage to musical pandemonium, backs
that name-check up--it's fast and furious, hard to the core. Blake--by day
an instructor at the Toronto East Detention Centre--surfs on the edge of
the headbanger predictable but never crosses that sorry line. The
bare-bones dialogue rips societal conventions like a metal riff rattling
the rafters of a structurally deficient nightclub. As one unapologetic
chick offers, "I’ve always been paranoid about men and their cocks and
having one stuck inside of me. That’s part of why I was so foolish with
that crackhead pimp nigger bastard. And yes it’s given me an extra special
paranoia about getting next to Black dudes like you." It's the music that drives this thing, man, it's all about the music. But not knowing Pantera, Unsane, and Madball from those mad cats Monk and
Marley won't leave you lost in these festering trenches. Just shadow Isaac "Iqbal" Kahn through the vagaries of Toronto's underground metal scene and
peer into his aloof obsession with the "female" metal outfit Titanium
Punch. His T-Punch servitude leads to epiphanies of god, love, and the
realities of his pigmentation--all while getting polluted, ogling women,
babysitting his sub-intellect roommate, and practising to become a
practising Muslim. The book rocks, leaving contentment but also a burn for
more--like a wicked bootleg recording that's got too much space at the end
of the tape. -- Sigcino Moyo
