Sudbury metal rappers were ahead of their time

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This article was published 06/03/2002 (8928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GROWING up in Sudbury in the late ’80s, Yassen Talaat and Bobby McIntosh were ridiculed for liking rap music along with the metal that was more acceptable to the other kids in the hardscrabble Ontario mining town.

Little did the neighbourhood bullies know that rap and metal would combine to be a powerful force — and that McIntosh and Talaat were ahead of the curve.

Today, the two childhood chums are simply Yas and Bobby, the leaders of Project Wyze. This six-piece band looks like your run-of-the-mill rap-metal act, until you realize they’ve actually been at it since the days when Korn was still something you slathered in butter and Limp Bizkit was a consequence of sloppy Tim Horton’s etiquette.

“We’ve been around since before this music had a name and we’ll be around long after it’s gone,” Yas said in the basement of the Walker Theatre the day of Project Wyze’s February concert with Bif Naked. The Toronto-based group, which returns tomorrow to play Winnipeg Arena with childhood hero Ozzy Osbourne and Windsor rock band The Tea Party, made its first rap-metal recording in 1995.

“It’s tough, because people think you’re the next guy jumping on the bandwagon, but we’ve been doing this for a while.”

As kids, Yas and Bobby thought of themselves as aspiring rappers, until a friend in a punk-rock band dared them to jump on stage one day in 1994. It was nothing short of a revelation for the duo.

The next year, they moved to London, Ont. and formed Project Wyze, which eventually earned a record deal with Sony Music Canada. The boys from northern Ontario now live in Toronto, which they continue to see as outsiders, thanks to rap-metal’s status as last year’s musical punching bag.

Whether or not their sound is original, Project Wyze stands out as a live act. The group was the strongest of five acts at February’s Bif Naked show.

Both Yas and Bobby are pumped to return to Winnipeg less than a month later with Osbourne. “We don’t know what to say. We don’t even believe it, we’re so nervous and excited,” Yas said. “Growing up in Sudbury, every kid had an Ozzy album.”

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Unlike Project Wyze, The Tea Party has played Winnipeg Arena before, headlining a free concert during the Red River Exhibition in 1996.

The eastern-influenced rock band joins the hard-driving Ozzy tour at an appropriate time: Frontman Jeff Martin has described his band’s latest disc, The Interzone Mantras, as the hardest Canadian rock record ever.

“Don’t you love it when I say things like that?” he offered during a Winnipeg visit last fall, making fun of his penchant for taking The Tea Party too seriously. “What I probably meant was with the sonics on this record and with the weight of what I’m saying, I don’t think there’s ever been a Canadian record like this.”

Among other things, The Interzone Mantras addresses Islamic fundamentalism in a song Martin wrote months before Sept. 11. But the sound is more stripped down than previous Tea Party efforts.

Tickets for tomorrow’s show are $65 at Select-A-Seat, 780-7328. The first band is slated to hit the stage by 7:30 p.m.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca