Titanium Punch
by Yashin Blake

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

original publication: Amazon.ca