La Brique

2. Montreal Discovers Heavy Metal

When La Brique opened in 1982, heavy metal was experiencing a period of considerable growth. The hard rock of the 1970s had laid the groundwork, but a new generation was developing its own bands, dress codes, publications, record stores and gathering places.

Montreal already had a thriving rock culture, but metal fans were looking for places where their music was not merely an occasional feature of the programming, but the very foundation of the venue's identity.

La Brique arrived at precisely the right moment. Its opening coincided with a decade in which heavy metal would rapidly diversify and reinvent itself. Hard rock, glam metal, speed metal, thrash and eventually death metal gradually developed their own audiences.

Montreal itself would become an especially fertile centre for this evolution, thanks to a local scene that produced several bands whose reputations extended far beyond Quebec.

3. 1982: Administrative Origins

Administrative records now make it possible to trace the legal origins of La Brique. On March 19, 1982, 114669 Canada Inc. was incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act. Its corporation number was 1289594.

A few weeks later, on May 7, 1982, a notice from Quebec's liquor licensing authority, the Régie des permis d'alcool du Québec, appeared in Le Devoir. It explicitly identified 114669 Canada Inc. and Club La Brique, located at 1419 Drummond Street.

The application concerned two authorizations: a bar licence permitting dancing and a bar licence permitting both dancing and live performances. The administrative address listed was 235 Sherbrooke Street West, Suite 903, in Montreal.

This document confirms that live entertainment and dancing were part of the club's intended activities from its inception. However, it was a notice of application, not proof that the licences were ultimately granted.

A corporate record for 114669 Canada Inc. also lists 32 Sainte-Catherine Street West as its registered office address, the same location as La Brique's second incarnation. This correspondence suggests administrative continuity, although the available information does not establish when that address was registered.

The company's last reported annual filing was for 1992, and it was officially dissolved on November 22, 2002. This legal dissolution should not be confused with the end of live concerts at La Brique in 1993.

4. La Brique on Drummond Street

La Brique officially opened on June 10, 1982, at 1419 Drummond Street, in downtown Montreal.

Its location was ideal. Just steps from Sainte-Catherine Street, it stood in the heart of a downtown district filled with bars, concert venues, shops, record stores and a substantial student population.

From its earliest years, La Brique strongly identified with hard rock and heavy metal. The club gradually became a place where fans could not only listen to this music, but also meet others who shared their tastes and cultural references.

An advertisement published in The Link on November 26, 1982, confirms La Brique's presence at 1419 Drummond Street only a few months after its opening.

5. A Place to Belong

The importance of La Brique cannot be understood solely through the list of bands that performed there. For many regular patrons, its primary function was social.

Before social media, and long before concert information could circulate instantly, specialized bars played an essential role in the formation of musical communities. People learned which bands were coming to town, exchanged records, recommendations and news, and met the same people they would later see at concerts.

Long hair, denim jackets covered with patches, band T-shirts and the visual codes associated with metal transformed these venues into instantly recognizable cultural spaces.

A report filmed in 1988 for the television program Caméra 88 offers a rare visual record of this period, showing La Brique's patrons in their everyday surroundings.

6. La Brique and Backstreet

La Brique did not exist in isolation. By the late 1980s, Backstreet had also become an important gathering place for Montreal's hard rock and heavy metal fans.

The two establishments were often compared, and a friendly rivalry developed between their respective clienteles. It would, however, be misleading to try to determine which of the two was Montreal's definitive metal club.

Accounts instead describe two venues of comparable importance, each with its own regular patrons. Their coexistence demonstrates how large Montreal's metal community had become, supporting several specialized establishments.

Following La Brique's temporary disappearance in 1990, some of its patrons naturally gravitated toward Backstreet, further strengthening that venue's importance.

7. 1990: The Fire

In April 1990, the history of the original La Brique came to an abrupt end when a fire destroyed the building at 1419 Drummond Street.

After nearly eight years of operation, the club suddenly disappeared from Montreal's nightlife landscape. Its future became uncertain, and the community lost one of its main gathering places.

The loss of the premises could have marked the definitive end of La Brique. Yet approximately one year later, the name reappeared at a new address.

8. 1991: A New Beginning on Sainte-Catherine

In May 1991, La Brique reopened at 32 Sainte-Catherine Street West.

The new location stood in the heart of a district already closely associated with nightlife and concert venues. Yet this second incarnation was not simply a reproduction of the original bar.

The new premises allowed La Brique to take on a different dimension. Concerts now played a much more prominent role, and in less than two years the club hosted a remarkably dense succession of local and international acts.

Available archives place the reopening in late May 1991. Some sources mention May 24, while others give May 30. In the absence of definitive documentary confirmation, the most cautious date remains May 1991.

9. A Full-Fledged Concert Venue

The surviving concert listings for 1991 and 1992 clearly illustrate La Brique's evolution. It was no longer merely a bar where metal music was played: it had become a stop on numerous concert tours.

In 1991, the archives document performances by FireHouse, Metal Church, BulletBoys, Extreme, Doughboys and The Gruesomes.

The year 1992 is even more revealing. La Brique hosted Body Count featuring Ice-T, Groovy Aardvark, Marillion, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Ramones, GWAR with Melvins, Lynch Mob, Gorguts and Obliveon.

On January 7, 1993, shortly before live concerts were discontinued, Bad Brains performed alongside Shades of Culture and Lizard, demonstrating just how far the venue's programming had expanded beyond the strict boundaries of heavy metal.

10. An Expanding Musical Program

This diversity was one of the most interesting characteristics of the second La Brique. Heavy metal remained central to its identity, but the boundaries between musical scenes were becoming increasingly fluid.

Thrash and death metal shared the stage with hard rock, glam metal, punk, hardcore and alternative rock. Montreal bands appeared on the same calendar as international artists whose music sometimes differed considerably from traditional metal.

The presence of bands such as Ramones, Bad Brains, Doughboys, The Gruesomes and Melvins shows that La Brique was participating in the broader surge of heavy and alternative music in the early 1990s.

This period also coincided with a transformation of metal itself. The commercial success of 1980s hard rock was beginning to fade, while death metal, hardcore, grunge and new forms of alternative rock were rapidly reshaping audience tastes and expectations.

11. GWAR: A Concert Preserved on Record

Among the concerts documented at La Brique, the performance by GWAR with Melvins on July 1, 1992, has a particularly remarkable distinction.

Part of GWAR's performance was recorded on location. Three songs captured live at La Brique — Voodoo Summoning, Captain Crunch and Have You Seen Me? — were released on the EP The Road Behind.

La Brique thus became literally part of an international band's discography, leaving a rare audio document of the venue at the height of its second incarnation.

12. 1993: The End of Live Concerts

In January 1993, La Brique's second incarnation reached a decisive turning point. An article by journalist Mark Lepage, published in The Gazette on January 16, 1993, reported that the club had just stopped presenting live concerts.

The article placed the end of live performances on the preceding Tuesday, most likely January 12, 1993. La Brique announced a shift toward techno and rave music, rather than the immediate and permanent closure of all its activities.

This contemporary account makes it possible to distinguish the end of concert programming from the definitive closure of the establishment, whose exact date remains to be established.

The announcement came at a time when Foufounes Électriques was also temporarily abandoning live concerts. The journalist presented these developments as part of a restructuring of Montreal's live music scene.

13. Economics and Concert Promoters: Behind the Scenes

Mark Lepage's article revealed several aspects of the difficulties faced by La Brique in early 1993.

The owner identified in the article, Donald Cole, had invested substantial sums to attract concerts that might otherwise have been presented at the Spectrum. Tickets often sold for between $6 and $12, while some performances drew relatively modest audiences.

The journalist presented this combination of high costs and limited ticket revenue as a likely explanation for the club's financial difficulties. However, the article did not constitute an official financial report.

The article also mentioned poor sightlines, problematic acoustics and certain controversial programming decisions. A prestigious concert lineup therefore did not necessarily guarantee a satisfying experience for every audience member.

The role of concert promoters was central. According to The Gazette, Donald K. Donald Productions had presented a substantial portion of its concerts at La Brique for approximately one year before resuming the use of Métropolis toward the end of 1992.

Debra Rathwell, vice-president at DKD, disputed the idea of a conflict between concert promoters and venues. She emphasized the differences in operating costs and size between the establishments, explaining that several shows presented at La Brique could not necessarily have been accommodated at the Spectrum.

14. From La Brique to Le Dôme

Following the La Brique period, the premises at 32 Sainte-Catherine Street West became Le Dôme, a nightclub associated with a musical world almost entirely opposite to that of its predecessor.

Where La Brique had been associated with distorted guitars, long hair and heavy metal, Le Dôme embraced dance music, techno and rave culture, which were then experiencing spectacular growth.

Le Dôme would itself become one of Montreal's major nightclubs of its era. MCPA archives document a capacity of approximately 2,000 people, along with an extensive sound and lighting system.

Few addresses illustrate the transformation of Montreal nightlife around the turn of the 1990s quite so clearly. At the same location, two generations and two radically different musical cultures succeeded one another within a matter of months.

15. Legacy

La Brique existed for only about a decade, interrupted by the fire and subsequent relocation, yet its memory remains closely associated with a defining period in the history of Montreal metal.

Its importance lies as much in the concerts it hosted as in the community it helped bring together. For a generation of fans, bars such as La Brique and Backstreet were places where a musical identity could be experienced every day, far beyond the few hours of a concert.

Its second incarnation left behind a particularly rich documentary record. Posters, concert calendars, photographs, setlists and recordings now make it possible to reconstruct a remarkably extensive program of performances spanning less than two years.

The history of La Brique therefore tells two stories at once: the emergence of heavy metal as a distinctive Montreal culture during the 1980s, and the extraordinarily rapid transformation of that culture at the beginning of the following decade.