What's the history of Career Suicide so far?
Considering that the band has been going on for eight or nine years now, there’s a lot of historical ground that could be covered. Sticking to the more relevant facts… Career Suicide was born of a number of irrelevant local bands that we’d all been playing in together for years. We got our proper start as Career Suicide around 2001. Soon after we recorded our first demo in our original drummer's basement in something like ten minutes. We almost abandoned the recording altogether as we couldn’t figure out the 4-track recorder, which was due back to the rental shop within half an hour of us finally recording a single take of the songs.
There was never much acclaim for the band locally in the first few years, but thanks to a string of release that were surprisingly (to us at least) well received and a series of short touring stints out of town we got quite a bit of attention, relatively speaking to the hardcore/punk scenes of course. Within a few years we had a few releases out, played regular shows around the US and Canada, and by 2003 even completed a tour of Europe. We continued to play and record over the course of the years and add to the discography, all the while going through a few changes to the line-up. We even made the cover of Maximum RocknRoll at some point.
In 2005 we did our first tour of Japan, which felt a bit like a surreal accomplishment considering we hadn’t started the band even with expectation of releasing a single record! 2006 was likely the most active year for Career Suicide, with tours of Europe (Winter), the United States (Summer), and Japan (Fall) all in one year. Mind you, none of these tours were longer than two weeks each. We all had work, school and other band commitments, so extended tours have never been an option; or really a desire, to be honest.
If memory serves (I’m terrible with dates), in 2006 we also finished the recording of our Attempted Suicide LP. This was our second full-length record, leaving a full three year gap since the release of our first self-titled LP. Relative to our other releases, which were usually recorded at the last possible moment and at a lightning pace (the first LP, with 20+ songs was recorded and mixed in something like two days) we spent a full six months recording Attempted Suicide. Naturally those six months equated to a lot of breaks between recording/mixing/mastering sessions, but that provided us a lot of time to reflect on the songs and keep working at them. The result was very noticeable, at least to our ears, and I can say for the first time that when I listen to this record, as opposed to any of the others, I don’t hear much of anything that I would have liked to do differently. With other releases it has almost been painful to listen to them for the first few weeks because all I can listen for are the “mistakes” or parts that we could have done better.
Another big boost for this record was the guest drumming of Brandon Farrell (of Direct Control/Government Warning/Municipal Waste). I don’t have the musical vocabulary to properly describe his incredible talents as a punk drummer, but sufficed to say that he really added a dimension to Attempted Suicide that I don’t think our other records had approached until then. The LP got a lot of attention, which was nice, and funnily enough even made top tens in national industry magazines in Canada, winning album of the year in one. Larger labels even approached us about licensing it to them.
Because of other commitments and quite honestly, being a bit burnt out on all the activity of the previous year, we weren’t too active in 2007, especially not relative to the attention the record was getting. In 2008 we were itching to get back in the recording studio and laid down three songs to what would be released as the Cherry beach EP for our UK/Ireland summer tour. This tour turned out actually to be the longest one we’d ever completed with 16 shows in 16 days.
Which bring us to the time of this interview, where we are finalizing plans to record a proper version of Cherry Beach with four songs: two re-recorded versions of tracks from the tour EP and 2 new ones. Beyond that we’re approaching that three year gap again since we last released an LP, so I imagine another shouldn’t be too far off. We’re also working to set up a European tour for the summer of 2009, but it’s still in its preliminary stages at this point.
Biggest highlight?
As I mentioned in my previous answer, when we started the band we never did set any goals for Career Suicide beyond writing songs for our own enjoyment, so the whole experience has been a bit of a highlight, to be quite honest. Having been a life-long fan of music and long time record “collector,” one of the most exhilarating moments for me came with our first vinyl release. It was a race between our first EP (on Kangaroo Records, from Holland) and the Toronto Omnibus compilation (on Schizophrenic Records, from Canada). Test pressings for the comp arrived first and when I put the needle to the vinyl and heard our songs play through my stereo for the first time, it was a pretty magical experience!
Any lows?
I’ve got nothing significant to report, honestly. I suppose with the band always being more a “friendly” endeavor than a vehicle for any sort of musical success, coupled with the fact that everyone involved has always been humble, doing it just to write good songs and have a good time, it’s been a fairly smooth ride. Thankfully, we’ve never had much of the ego wars or dramatic disappointments that a lot of bands that have been around for this long have traditionally dealt with.
How did your UK tour go?
Great! It was easily one of our best tours yet. Haha, you’ll notice a trend of low expectations, but again we weren’t too optimistic about what to expect from this tour. Frankly, we’d always avoided booking a tour of the UK because of warnings from other bands and especially British people warning us that shows in the UK are low-key affairs without much reaction from the crowd. Our experience however was exactly the opposite. I’d say 14 of those 16 shows were not only well attended; the crowds were amazingly involved and appreciative. As a hardcore band you really feed off that kind of energy when you perform and we had a great time.
Anything interesting happen in Glasgow?
Aside from being in Glasgow for the first time in my life, you mean? Within 20 minutes of our arrival I witnessed a heroin deal, a fight, and bought a Pringle sweater at a used shop, not understanding why a used sweater should cost 20 pounds, knowing as little as I obviously do about Scottish fashion, haha. The show was cool, someone brought us fresh pizza and Indian food which, despite being vegan, was good, and we even found time to go to a record store and wander the city a bit, which often is more than you can hope for when you are on tour.
Any plans to come back?
We would absolutely love to. There aren’t at the moment any concrete plans for when we could come back next, but ideally within the next couple of years we’d love to do it again, even if only a shorter stint as part of a wider European tour.
How about the Japanese tour?
Haha, how about it?
Any weird shit happen there?
Lots of shit! Like I said, the first tour was pretty surreal. None of us had ever been to Asia before, and having been groomed with a massive respect for Japanese hardcore, we were definitely in awe of being there. Our first show was actually scheduled for the day that we arrived to Tokyo. Considering the pressure to arrive on time, naturally there was some mechanical problem with our plane before take off, so our 15-hour flight from Toronto to Tokyo was delayed to the point where we were bound to miss sound check. You need to understand that missing a sound check is a major no-no in Japan and often can result in a band not being allowed to play the show. As you might expect, the Japanese have all kinds of strict codes that are unlike how a punk show would be run back home.
Long story short, we arrived at Narita airport after a delayed 15-hour flight and needed immediately to snap out of the shock of being in Japan as there was still a two-hour trip to downtown Tokyo by train ahead of us. By some miracle we navigated the maze of the airport and train schedules and made it to the proper train station where the very stressed out, and by that point severely drunk, members of Forward had been waiting for us to finally show up.
We rushed by foot from the train station, dragging our luggage, gear, records and merch behind us down the narrow streets of Tokyo trying to take in the amazing sights while we raced to the venue. As if this wasn’t all over-whelming enough, to finally arrive at the club after this marathon and see Career Suicide written on the front of the club headlining this show was just over the top. Add to this that when we walked into the club, we found it so packed that we had to hoist our luggage over our heads to make it through the crowd, push our way to the stage and quickly set up to close out the show.
The reaction from the crowd was mental. Normally it’s hard to put on a good and energetic show after so much sitting around and air travel, but the response from the audience was totally overwhelming. I’m still shocked/flattered every time we go to a foreign country and the audience is singing along to our songs. Anyway, that was just the first show! Both tours of Japan were great for us… the first tour for the wonder of getting to play in Japan to great crowds and with great bands; the second tour for all those reasons and also for the opportunity to really get to see a lot of the country, as we even got to play a show on one of the southern Islands!
Are you guys working on any new material right now?
After many delays, we should have the proper recording of Cherry Beach completed within a few weeks. Once that is released we’ve talked about another EP to coincide with our upcoming summer tour. We don’t really operate by any schedule, but speaking for myself, I’m really itching to start working on new songs and playing more shows again.
Is it hard to keep the momentum up with Career Suicide what with other members being involved in pretty demanding projects?
It absolutely is, but it has its benefits too. We’re all really busy people with all kinds of commitments, so with less time to spend on Career Suicide we just focus our energy elsewhere. Just in terms of music, CS members have been involved in numerous side-projects, so we’re keeping busy until the band can pick up again.
How's Toronto as a city?
I love it. I used to go on for years about its faults with many attempts to move away, but have always ended up coming back. And the more places I get to visit in the world, I have to say, I love living in Toronto more and more. Sure it’s a relatively young city, it’s not especially famous for it’s geography, architecture or culture, but it’s a really livable place with a great balance of all the things that it’s not especially famous for. In other words, you really can find everything in this city, even if it’s not necessarily the best in the world. In terms of punk… there’s always been a lack of all-ages venues, and the scene’s gone through it’s ups and downs, but there’s never a shortage of stuff going on and in all the years that I’ve been involved, periodic waves of new faces have always showed up to keep things going and interesting. I suppose though, if you spend enough time anywhere big enough, you’ll find your niche, and discover the ‘diamonds in the rough’ that aren’t immediately apparent to visitors and you make it your own… that said, I’m not planning on moving anywhere else.
Does it get you pumped to have so much awesome music being made around you?
Totally. And a little healthy competition is a good thing… it causes you to keep trying to raise the bar and do everybody one better with your next song/record/show/art work/etc. Everybody goes through phases when they are more or less moved by the happenings in the scene, but it’s always really refreshing when someone puts out a great new record and it snaps you back and inspires you to create something new yourself.
Are there any hidden local gems not many people are into?
In the age of the internet, I really don’t think there are… it’s funny how there are people half-way across the world that know more about the local gossip of the Toronto scene than I can even keep track of, haha! That said there really are some people doing a lot locally in Toronto these days to breath new life into it, from promoters to bands. For examples check out: Stuck in the City for all the stuff that Greg is up to, as for bands we’ve got a whole new crop of kids doing stuff like Molested Youth, and check out our drummer Dave’s side-project Deaf Mutations, where he sings.
Any shoutouts? Closing Words?
Thanks for the interview, Alistair… and thanks to everyone that still supports us and takes the time to keep up with the band after all these years… it still dumbfounds and means the world to us!
Thanks Martin.
