Hotel Wolfe Island will play host to a rather unique musical experience as Thunder Glove takes the stage this Saturday night.
The Toronto based band’s founder Greg Dalgetty says Thunder Glove is a “genuine, real life, 8-bit, barbarian experience” that is eager to bring their performance to Hotel Wolfe Island, and Dalgetty says he feels safe declaring this will be the first time barbarians have “invaded” Wolfe Island.
With support from local artists Kakaow and Jukebox County, Thunder Glove will present instrumental, synthesizer based music inspired largely by soundtracks of old school barbarian movies, in particular the film “Deathstalker 2”.
The project began out of one of several COVID-19 induced lockdowns, with Dalgetty finally finding the time to buy and teach himself how to play a synthesizer with the added spare time forced on by the pandemic.
While teaching himself the ins and outs of his new toy, Dalgetty says he was consuming a “steady diet” of barbarian movies, and the idea of forming a project making synth-based, barbarian inspired music became appealing to him.
After producing and releasing the band’s debut project “Escape From Hell Mountain” on his own, Dalgetty enlisted the support of some former bandmates to turn the recording project into a full fledged band.
Even with the rather niche space Thunder Glove looked to occupy, Dalgetty said he felt confident those he reached out to would be on board to give the project a shot, and was pleased when all his first choices agreed to join the band.
“I’ve been playing in these types of bands for a little over fifteen years,” Dalgetty said.
“I’d much rather reach out to people I know and like than have to audition strangers and they were all into it.”
Dalgetty says the band is pretty serious about its commitment to being barbarians, and from the point they get on stage to when they pack up the car to leave – the members will be sticking true to character acting like barbarians.
Practices have even included meetings where the members discuss just how they want to come across as barbarians, and Dalgetty said the “barbaric but very honourable” style of Star Trek’s Klingons acted as an inspiration for their band’s “code” as barbarians.
“We sort of decided we’d go for a similar thing there,” Dalgetty said.
“We wanted to be barbaric and brutal but also have lines that we wouldn’t cross.”
While the entire concept is a bit of a gimmick, the band is still dedicated to producing high quality music.
Dalgetty says, however, that with the style of music played you can only take yourself so seriously.
“I don’t have any qualms about admitting this is a humorous endeavour,” Dalgetty said.
“We take the songs seriously and we try to make them fun but at the same they’re sort of rousing, synth-based, galloping, barbaric songs… they’ve got this sort of inherently goofy quality to them.”
Recently, Thunder Glove played to 200 people at Toronto’s Revue Cinema ahead of a 40th anniversary of Conan the Barbarian.
The band has plans for another yet to be announced show with Revue Cinema, and takes the stage at Handlebar in Toronto on January 14th.
Admission to Saturday night’s concert on Wolfe Island is $10.
