Friday's show at the Biltmore has been postponed until Dec 10 due to injury. All tickets purchased for the concert will be honoured for that date. For those unable to attend the Dec 10 show, refunds will be available at point of purchase starting Monday. Congress, Baptists and Metal Cult DJs will still be performing on Friday. Cover $5 or free with Bison B.C. ticket, which then can be kept for Dec 10

Bison B.C.

With Congress, Baptists

POSTPONED

Biltmore Cabaret, 2755 Prince Edward

Tickets: $15 at Zulu, Scrape, Red Cat and ticketweb.ca

VANCOUVER -- Bison B.C. guitarist-vocalist Dan And is just about ready to leave Vancouver.

Should that ever happen, you can probably thank the 2010 Winter Olympics for driving him out of town.

Reached via phone in April just before the release of Bison B.C.’s latest album Dark Ages — while the band was touring the U.S. opening for Oakland-based power trio High On Fire — And made his frustration with the overall state of affairs in Vancouver fairly clear.

“I love Vancouver — don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I feel like it’s my town and all my friends are there, and the family and the community I’ve surrounded myself with is there.

“But I’ve almost reached the point where I’m too fed up and I just want to go up north and hide in the woods.”

He laughed.

Dark Ages admittedly deals in large part with Vancouver’s makeover before the big event that took place in February.

Bison B.C.’s band members all work and live in and around Vancouver’s embattled Downtown Eastside, a part of the city And said was swept under the rug before and during the Games to make way for showcasing the “pretty” side of Vancity to the rest of the world.

While writing the material for Dark Ages, a word popped up — “Renaissance,” which appears in the lyrics of the album’s opening track, Stressed Elephant — that encapsulated And’s feelings and served as a catalyst for the album’s direction and overall theme.

“You start thinking about the Dark Ages and decadent societies that get to a certain point of decadence before they just collapse,” And said. “I think that we’re headed there.

“I’m kind of obsessed with the idea of 2012. I’ve actually got an application on my iPhone that’s counting down. Sometimes I’ll watch that for a while, just waiting for it. I don’t think anything’s going to happen — I just like the idea.”

You can only imagine And in hiding somewhere in the mountains in a little shack, surrounded by canned goods and camping gear, sitting by the stove and staring at his iPhone, waiting for the 2012 deadline to come and most likely go without a sound.

“Yeah, I’m going to be a crazy hill man,” And said. “Me and my girlfriend will be boarded up — a two-person militia that doesn’t do anything and just waits.”

On its second album for heavy- metal stalwart label Metal Blade — “If idiots like us can get on Metal Blade, anybody can do it,” And said — Bison B.C. finds itself refining its barbarian onslaught with flurries of acoustic guitars and keyboard touches.

And attributes this new approach to the band’s evolving relationship with Vancouver-based producer Jesse Gander, who also produced the band’s previous album, 2008’s Quiet Earth.

“You need dynamics to make things heavy,” And said. “A lot of metal nowadays is steady double-kick drum, and it loses its heaviness because your ears just get tired.

“We went in and did an entire day of feedback and guitar noise that [Gander] used in certain parts here and there,” And added. “He really wanted to make one song flow into the other. I love that dynamic. It keeps things interesting for us, too.”

Stressed Elephant, for example, lurches forward with blasts of French horn. Fear Cave ends in a static-laden coda. Album closer Wendigo Pt. 3 (Let Him Burn) begins with a pensive acoustic guitar and piano line overlapped with the sound of trains recorded near the Rogers sugar refinery in Vancouver.

The latter track is the third instalment in the “Wendigo series” that began on Quiet Earth, an album that featured the first two chapters in the song cycle.

Considering this is becoming sort of a running theme, are there any more Wendigo songs to be expected in the future?

“I didn’t intend on writing three Wendigos,” And said with a laugh. “When I started writing, it just kept coming. Even the story in the lyrics, I didn’t feel like it was done.

“But it’s done for now — I don’t want to keep writing Wendigo songs over and over again.”

All things considered, the Wendigo theme — referring to the mythical cannibalistic creature of Algonquian lore — seems to fit really well with the whole 2012/run to the hills/end of the civilized world thing.

“That’s what I could do: I could do a whole concept album about moving to the hills and trying to find the Wendigo,” And said.

“Maybe I’m on to something. I could make a documentary about losing my mind.

“It’ll be out like 10 years from now — ‘Whatever happened to Dan And? Where did he go?’”