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July 14, 2025 | Featuring: Slash Need

Reverie Online | Slash Need Isn’t Waiting for Permission, They’re Already in the Room

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.

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