Alongside a sense of occasion, decent transit, and the ability of people to discern yogawear from streetwear, something Vancouver has conspicuously lacked in the past few years is a thriving metal scene. Yeah, there's hair metal (Crystal Pistol; sorry, dudes, you're hair farmers), Darkness-inspired irony metal (the fun-but-forgettable Rock'N), and metal for people who never realized metal died (any given night at the Cobalt will turn up a good number of these acts). On the other hand, cool bands making loud music that nonmetalheads would be happy to throw the goat horns for have all but vanished. If the members of Vancouver's Bison have any say in the matter, it's time for a resurgence.

Sitting in Zigs on Main Street, enjoying recuperative afternoon Caesars, singer-guitarist James "Gnarwell" Farwell, guitarist Dan And, and bassist Masa Anzai look exactly the way their debut album, Earthbound, sounds. As it happens, they also look familiar to anyone who knows the West Coast's indie-music scene: Anzai played with Karen Foster; And was with Victoria group Pequod. (Drummer Brad MacKinnon, who's called in sick, did time with Radio Berlin and Fuck Me USA.) Perhaps most famously, though, Farwell is from S.T.R.E.E.T.S., a skate-hardcore band that pretty much invented East Van pride and then went on permanent hiatus last year, with one member getting married and moving to New York, another finding a home in Pride Tiger, and Farwell embarking on a mission to bring metal back to the sleepy fishing village of Lotusland.

"Not making music is pretty much the worst fucking thing that can ever happen to a musician," says Farwell, whose demeanour shifts unpredictably between couldn't care less and scarily intense. "S.T.R.E.E.T.S. ended, and we all have wonderful lives, and we're all friends. We're all just fuckups who can't exist together. This [Bison] is the most functional band that I've ever been in."

Having written a number of songs, Farwell recruited And when the guitarist moved here from Victoria last year.

"There's no good musicians in this city," complains Farwell. "Or if they are good, they're total douche bags. No good musicians are available, anyway. Especially guitar players. Guitar players are generally dickheads."

"It worked out well," adds And, whose down-to-earth amiability plays perfect yin to Farwell's yang, "because I've never played this kind of music before, except for in my bedroom. And, in Victoria, I had been playing bass, because there's a shortage of bass players.…I always ended up in rock bands. But I always played guitar and wrote metal songs when I was growing up."

And so, two guitarists who loved things loud, they recruited a like-minded rhythm section in MacKinnon and Anzai, and Bison was born, its name appropriate given that the brand of music they set out to make had gone from thriving to almost extinct. Simply put, they're trying to revive a bygone genre; galloping, pilsner-powered metal, with songs that have names like "Wartime" and "The Curse (of the White Wizard)". The band isn't, however, above deviating from its basic attack plan, as "Dark Skies Above" demonstrates, adding a huge dose of straight-up blues. What ties it all together is a dedication to keeping things heavy.

"Making honest, original, good heavy music is really difficult to do," Farwell says. "It's more than just being loud. It's more than just being mean and writing about the end of the world and the devil."

That mindset may be the reason that Bison is getting such love from audiences who are aching for music that's both thunderous and purposeful. One listen to Earthbound tells you that the group is serious about what it's doing, two listens make you forget about hair metal, and by the third listen, even the foppiest of indie-pop fans will remember why amps go up to 10. Bison's live shows are similarly spectacular, with a new crop of 'bangers coming out in droves to catch the group. And while a significant portion of the crowd may be out due to the band members' aforementioned associations with well-loved bands of the past, Bison's purist-minded sonic vision also deserves credit.

"The one thing, when we first sat down, I asked James what he wanted to do, and he was like, 'Dude, just crush it,'" And says.

"Crush everything," adds Farwell. "How are we accomplishing it? Riffs, man. Important love of the riff. Honestly loving the shit that you do. You would just, like, do anything for the riff. It's like your child: you create it, and you nurture it, and it grows and it grows, and it turns into this fucking amazing thing that you would die for, because it's your fucking child. And then you send it out into the world, and it destroys things."

Farwell and his bandmates are laughing at this point, but you can tell that the singer is earnest about what he's saying. Still, he's cognizant of metal clichés and aware of how he's sounding rhapsodizing about riffs, which enables him to poke fun at the conventions of the genre.

"That's what's great about this band," Farwell says with a laugh. "Dan will take care of, like, the wizards and shit, and I'll take care of, like, killing cops and the revolution."

But does he really believe in crushing the system? Or is he content just to bring back crushing music?

"I certainly don't want to start a revolution," Farwell says, speaking directly into the tape recorder for comic effect. "But look at the world, man. Now more than ever. It's heroic. You have this moment when you're touching someone's life. You're making them forget about every other bullshit thing in their life. Their job, their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever's their problem. That's revolution. You make somebody stoked."