The in-store performance is a venerable indie-rock tradition, providing fans of all ages the opportunity to see bands outside of the usual dank club environment and at a reasonable hour to boot. However, chalk it up to a translation quirk, but Israeli garage-metal-boogie monsters Monotonix take the phrase "in-store performance" to mean just that: a performance in the entire fucking store. And in the case of their Saturday afternoon NXNE show at Sonic Boom, that meant taking the show to both floors of the massive Bloor Street space — and outside of it too.

Just about the only place Monotonix didn't play is the store's elevated basement-corner stage, choosing instead to set up right on the floor, all the better for maniacal, shirtless frontman Ami Shalev — the kind of guy who puts the "eww" in "hirsute" — to do all of the following, in no particular order: hork in a videographer's lens; hurtle himself into the vinyl bins; sing a song through the inside of one attendee's mesh shirt; dump bins and bags of garbage atop drummer Ran Shimoni (a.k.a. "hey, that dude looks like Borat!") mid-song; toss a young Asian woman in the front on top of drummer Ran Shimoni mid-song; and then disassemble his kit to allow guitarist Yonatan Gat the opportunity to keep rhythm with the kick drum. 

But rather than reassemble the mess, Montonix simply relocate, moving the performance to the foot of the stairwell — which naturally grants Shalev the liberty to sprint upstairs and run laps around the store's ground-floor space and use the stairwell railings as monkey bars, while Gat punctuates his slide riffs with slides down the banister.

 

So where do you go from there? Well outside, of course: Shalev grabs Shimoni's snare stand while the drummer follows footsteps behind keeping time, leading a procession out the store's front doors, and then smack dab in the middle of Bloor Street, with the two forming an ad-hoc two-man drum circle that stops westbound traffic for a good three minutes and generally freaks out cyclists and motorists alike.

But while Monotonix may be crazy, they sure as hell ain't dumb — Shalev stops the show just before anyone has a mind to call the cops, and when the crowd turns around to head back into the store, Gat is strategically waiting there with a bag full of merch. (Needless to say, business was brisk.) Sure, a Monotonix show is less about the songs they play than the things they do, but then the biggest lie about music is that "it's all about the music."
 

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