Slash Need Isn’t Waiting for Permission, They’re Already in the Room
Toronto’s industrial synth punks are building their audience the old fashioned way: one sweaty, radical, cathartic live show at a time.
Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder) - Slash Need @ SXSW
If you’ve seen Slash Need live, you get it. You don’t need a press release or debut album (they haven’t released one yet) to understand why they’re one of the most exciting acts emerging from Toronto’s underground. What Slash Need does on stage is pure presence: masked, sweaty, latex laced catharsis. Somewhere between drag show, punk gig, and ritual, their performance isn’t just a set: it’s a portal.
“I’ve always wanted to create a world for people to step into,” says Dusty, the band’s frontperson. “Somewhere that feels charged. Where you can forget your day job and just be in the room.”
That world is intense and intimate - equal parts goth, grotesque, queer, and ecstatic. It’s a space of transformation, where sexuality and power collide in costumed performance. Their live show crackles with the kind of physical tension you can’t stream. And that’s the point.
Their debut album, Sit and Grin, is due out this fall. But the buzz? It’s already here. Before the record, before the music videos, there were the shows. No fancy rollouts, no sleek digital marketing. Just word-of-mouth, sweaty venues, and a community that built itself. In that way, Slash Need echoes a ‘90s-era music ethos: the kind of slow burn, where performance came first and the fanbase formed around the fire.
Their origin story feels more like fate than strategy. What began as a casual jam night—an outlet for release—unexpectedly pushed Alex Low and Dusty into deeper collaboration and musicianship. “We just sort of wrote four songs by the end of it,” Dusty recalls. A week later, when a band dropped off a bill Dusty was organizing, they filled the slot themselves and Slash Need was born.
Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder) - Slash Need at Sled Island
Those early performances were more experimental noise than structured sets. “I was using a nail file on a microphone,” Dusty laughs. “We had a rock with a contact mic on it. It was chaotic, weird, really fun.” Over time, their sound shifted toward a harder, faster industrial pulse—an evolution shaped by isolation and angst. “We were listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, and Skinny Puppy,” Dusty says. “We wanted something that felt more raw, more serious.”
But throughout it all, the focus remained on the live show, where Dusty, who comes from a background in performance, commands the space with power and vulnerability. They speak candidly about confronting stage fright by wearing full-coverage masks early on, the kind without eyeholes. “There was a lot of freedom in that,” they say. “If I reach into the space, I won’t fall. If I bump into someone, I’ll be caught.”
There’s a consistent tension in the way Slash Need merges performance and identity, sexuality and spectacle, and Dusty leans right into it. “If you want to sexualize me, fine. But I’m going to terrify you right back.”
That ethos runs through everything from the music to the gear: outfits pieced together from latex, thrifted pieces, and items repurposed from an old pest control job, including a pair of long black rubber gloves originally meant for handling baby possums. It’s not costume for costume’s sake, it’s about transformation, distortion, and ownership. “We like asymmetry. We like things falling apart,” Dusty says. “They just get better.”
That spirit extends to how the band navigates opportunities. Their appearance at SXSW this year wasn’t about platforming the festival, it was about showing up authentically, in the face of risk, to meet the people they’ve connected with online, in community, and across borders. As a queer and trans band, traveling to Texas wasn’t an easy choice. But their presence there mattered. It’s rebellious for a band like Slash Need to go where they need to for their art. The stage becomes a platform—not just for music, but for expression, resistance, and deep connection. And that connection is what grounds them most.
“Releasing music is great,” Dusty says. “But there’s so much emphasis now on creating a product without first building any kind of relationship with your audience. We just started by playing shows, falling in love with performing again, and went from there.”
It’s a reversal of the typical rollout: rather than trying to package the live show for an album, Slash Need is pouring the chaotic, sweaty spirit of their performance into the record. “We’ve never done a full-length before,” Dusty says. “This one feels like a timestamp of who we are right now.”
That includes their recent performance at Calgary’s Loophole venue as part of Sled Island, where played alongside Silk Road and Void Comp. It was their first time in Calgary, and they made the most of it, stretching the trip into a full West Coast tour with stops in Vancouver, Kamloops, Nanaimo, and Victoria. Next up is Edmonton at Purple City Music Festival in September.
Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder) - Slash Need at Sled Island
From Toronto, Dusty offers a long list of shoutouts: Stella, Ancient Greece, Bonnie Trash, Moon King, Zones, Quarterback Baby, Dr. Cement, and more. They speak about Toronto with love but also realism: it’s a hard city to create in, expensive and increasingly hostile to noise and experimentation. But that’s exactly why artists like Slash Need thrive. There’s an urgency to it and they invest in community.
Their advice to new artists? “Figure out what you’re interested in. What you represent. Who your music is for. You can’t let other people defi ne that for you.” Slash Need didn’t wait to be discovered. They didn’t build a brand and hope for an audience. They played until people showed up. They threw their bodies on stages and into crowds and made art out of passion and rebellion.
And if the money ever rolls in? “We’d take time,” Dusty says. “A few months to work and rehearse and just build. That would be the dream.”
Catch Slash Need at Purple City Music Festival in Edmonton, AB this fall. Tickets here. Listen to their latest single “Double Dare” out now.