Priors..if you don’t know them…well, you should! An early 80s sounding punk band from Montreal, they have this unbelievably reckoning force of pure mad intense energy. Super emotive melodic, fast-paced, their songs hit you hard, like being smashed in the face! Signature catchy guitar hooks sound like being attacked by a swarm of bees. They present as biting, discordant and dark sounding, with recurrent weird hyper hopping beats, like you’re dancing in a sick and twisted alternate reality. Their music has head spinning swirly amusement park rides written all over it. I heard these guys open for Mark Sultan back in October at bar L’Escogriffe. They are as amazing live as they are on record. Singer Chance answered some questions I had about the band…
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How did you guys meet and form a band?
I (chance) had a bunch of bedroom demos and was looking to put something together. I had mentioned to seb while we were on tour with Sonic Avenues that I wanted to get something started and wondered if he’d wanna be involved. He was into it so I pushed further and looked for a drummer. I had just started hanging out with Drew and asked him if he’d wanna play….he seemed very into it and had some friends he thought would also be down. Enter Alan and Stuart! I had met al once at a show and I had no idea who the long haired kid was (stu). He had already learned the songs so I was very in love with him from the get go.
How do ideas for songs come to you?
I work very hard on songs in my spare bedroom and anything I think fits or is worth a shit I send to the boys and we transfer them into loud songs from originally being very different sounding.
What are some of your favorite venues for playing shows and why? Any memorable stories in particular?
I like to play at l’esco and Brasserie Beaubien currently. Barfly is a fun one too (we played our first show there). Outside of the city I like to play This Ain’t Hollywood in Hamilton and Call the Office in my hometown of London Ontario.
What are your aspirations as a band/musicians?
I’d like to play full time and sell records and quit my job. I’d like to make records while not on tour and die happy.
What are some of the festivals you played? What was fun, what was not?
We played Up Here festival this year which was a complete shit show. A few of us did mushy on the drive up there. We got real friggled that weekend for surely.
Touring: Where have you gone? Where are you going?
We’ve been through a lot of Ontario. We’ve been out east as far as Halifax. We’d like to play all over though. We’re going to Europe in May and we’re really looking forward to that!
Growing up what kind of music/bands did you listen to?
I liked a lot of really melodic music. I grew up on Nirvana – by the late 90’s was very into Sunny Day Real Estate and Jimmy Eat World. Then I started doing a lot of drugs and experimenting with pretty much any music I could get my hands on.
What’s your earliest musical experience memory?
Going to watch my mom jam with her band when I was around 4 years old. She’d always bring me along and I’d play with the other kids outside but I was very taken with the music experience. I still remember it like it was yesterday.
How would you qualify your experience playing live?
I’d qualify it as awesome. We have a lot of fun and I think the crowd comes along for that ride a lot of the time. We like to play.
What songs do you enjoy playing the most?
The newest song I’ve written is always my favourite song to play.
Tell us about your newest record, New Pleasure… How long did it take to make? Who came up with the artwork/look and sound? How does it differ from your first record?
It took me probably around two months of demoing, tho a few of the songs were written pretty early on (Got In Me, New Pleasure, Heartstrings). We worked on the whole thing for as long as it took to write to fine tune I’d say. We only jam once a week so it takes a little longer than we’d like I think to get the ideas finished. We were in studio for two days and it took about a month to mix (I am an asshole that overthought everything). The artwork was done by our friend (Sweet) Dave O’Connor. He’s done the art for most of the music I’ve written. He’s an incredible artist.
As for being different from the first one – we did the first one really quickly and didn’t have a distinct sound in mind when we were recording it. It was a mixture of how we sound live and how I was demoing at the time (vocally at least) but we did it to tape and I really liked how it turned out. We’re a better band now. We’re bigger sounding but also I think we know what kinda band we are now.
