March 9, 2001

A wise band builds its foundation on rock. Or in Critical Mass's case, Christian Rock. This highly successful band has garnered a number of awards for their stylish and thoughtful music. In 1998, they were a finalist for Rock Album of the Year and Inspirational Song of the Year (Body and Blood) at the 20th annual Covenant Awards, Canadian Gospel Music Association. They achieved number one status on the mp3.com Spiritual Rock Charts with I'll Be Fine. They also were winners of the Modern Rock/Alternative Album and International Group of the Year with their freshman album Faith Looks Up at the first annual United Catholic Music and Video Association Unity Awards. More recently they won Rock Album of the Year at the 22nd Covenant Awards, Canadian Gospel Music Association for their second album Completely.

All of their success aside, I really wanted to know the meaning behind the name. "Being a Catholic band, the Mass is so central to our faith, so we went with Critical Mass", explained vocalist David Wang. The band's name does not signify a nuclear explosion of self righteousness. Wang said "Some people think when you pick up a Christian album, it's just going to be very preachy. I think in this album [Completely], there's a lot of interesting viewpoints, and there are a couple of just straight love songs".

Eric Kubica explains that their music is designed to let people know Church can be a fun place and the music can be interesting. The octet is upfront about faith being the central motivation behind their blend of pop harmonies and catchy guitar riffs. "We do come from a very traditional Christian standpoint, but yet the music can be pretty heavy with the rap section in the middle and some pretty heavy guitars happening".

Having played together since 1996, this band consists mostly of local members and describes their style as " a little more contemporary, it's not sort of an organy church stuff that's traditional. It's a little more upbeat".

They hoped to make Mass a little more relevant and appealing to the younger churchgoers. It's a real pop, modern rock sound, probably with a little more intricacy than you'd here in a lot of modern rock bands. (ASIDE: THIS IS A MISQUOTE... ONLY A FEW OF OUR SONGS ARE REALLY APPROPRIATE FOR MASS. THE REST ARE FOR EVERYDAY LISTENING- CRITICAL MASS)

Six of the eight members are from the tri-city area, while the other two members hail from Brampton and Ottawa. David Wang and Eric Kubica are both faculty members here at UW and no, their students don't get extra credit for coming to see a show. Other members are Jodie Wang, Matt Devine, Tim Devine, Matt Bierschbach, Tom Pawelko, and Sharon Pawelko.

The band has a very mature sound despite only having been together for five years. Wang explained " Because we have four songwriters, we have this ability, this rapport to basically be able to criticize each other, and actually be quite brutal about criticising each others work. A lot of people are a single songwriter. They're a little more like an island, whereas we basically get in a room and you'd play something and the other songwriters of the band will look at you and go 'well... ' and usually what ends up being the final song doesn't bear any relation to what it came in as."

Critical Mass plays most of their live shows in front of church congregations. The band is really looking forward to playing in front of potentially hundreds of thousands of people during World Youth Day celebrations in Toronto in 2002.

And on the eighth day, God said Let there be rock!

Ryan Porter for THE IMPRINT