June 17 - One of the most memorable performances of the entire festival came on Friday night at the El Mocambo thanks to Burlington hardcore heroes Saint Alvia (formerly The Saint Alvia Cartel).

Currently in the studio working on their followup to their 2008 album Between The Lines, tentatively due to be released in March of 2012, the band nearly backed out of the gig due to guitarist Greg Taylor having overworked and lost his voice, one half of the group's main vocal forces along with singer Ben Rispin.

Instead of canceling the gig, however, the band came up with a brilliant solution: The Saint Alvia Guide to Singing Our New Material. Armed with a marker and an easel, the band wrote out the lyrics to the choruses of their latest songs and Rispin taught them to the audience on the fly with the bouncing ball technique characteristic of karaoke.



With easy to remember lyrics or humourous messages - ranging from "hey hey hey hey" to "if you're still reading this you are way too sober" - the band connected with the crowd assembled very quickly, and participation was impressive. The system was wildly successful, enough so to inspire the band to continue to do so after Taylor's voice healed.

The new music that the band tested from their current recording sessions is fun and exciting, notably different in style in comparison to their back catalogue - notably so with the recruitment of keyboardist Jon Laurin roughly one year ago - yet with all the same energy as the band are known for.

Taking the stage at 2 a.m. was one of the evening's special guest performances, Los Angeles' Dum Dum Girls, fresh off of their gig at Lee's Palace at 11 p.m. Started as a solo project by front woman Dee Dee (Kristin Gundred), the four-piece band is an all-woman punk outfit in the vein of Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Ramones.



The band's focus on strong, powerful songs was key to their maintaining the energy in the room, which got to be quite full of people following the buzz created on Twitter after people packed into their earlier performance. And the band did not disappoint, clearly still riding the adrenaline themselves.

Dum Dum Girls delivered a solid performance, converting everyone in attendance into fans while breaking hearts and ears with songs from their 2010 full-length LP I Will Be and their latest single, "He Gets Me High" from the EP of the same name.

It was a hard, fast, dirty affair that had everyone in the room riding high on adrenaline and fishnet stockings, however with the Dum Dum Girls' cool command over an audience, there's little doubt that was exactly the way they wanted it to be.