Alexisonfire

Fri 6th Aug, 2010 in Features

The heady days of emo, screamo and all things hardcore have long passed. Out of all the distortion and noise Alexisonfire have endured and pushed onward, far beyond their humble beginnings in the Canadian city of St Catharine’s.

Having played the mainstage at Soundwave Festival twice now, the band are no strangers to our shores and vocalist/screamer George Petit remarks that the band has a lot of fond memories of Australian trips and close friends here.

Their fanbase and growth here has paralleled their experience back home. “Its a place where when we first started going through we were playing smaller shows and it’s gotten progressively bigger as we’ve continued to play there, so that doesn’t hurt either, knowing that it’s catching on and that people are interested in what we do.”

Australian fans have indeed caught on over the years, such that Petit acknowledges the band has more support in Australia than even in the States or the UK.

Petit and the band have always been openly critical of the trends they witness around them and today is no exception as Petit discusses how the ‘scene’ continues to transform. The band’s own musical progression through to their fourth album Old Crows/Young Cardinals has been characteristically reactionary against the changes they felt were for the worse.

“We’re still in a lot of ways a screamo band…[but] screamo has changed a lot throughout the years. I don’t think people are going to look back on that genre fondly”. Petit qualifies his distaste for the current scene by referring to the legitimate roots of screamo found in bands such as Orchid, Pg.99, Saetia, Love Lost But Not Forgotten and Neil Perry. These were all bands he really loved when Alexisonfire first started, but he soon became disillusioned as bands started to turn to haircuts and something that looked more like “hair metal than punk rock”.

Having been together for more than a decade now, Alexisonfire may be considered veterans of the scene, but Petit feels like someone else is at the helm these days. He describes their recent Warped Tour experience last year as “challenging” in more ways than one.

“There wasn’t a lot of things that I love about music on the Warped Tour…It just seems like a lot of bands now are growing up with this ambition to be the biggest band in the world or to try and make pop music. I don’t feel like that was ever what we were trying to do or what any of the bands that we grew up around were trying to do. You just did it because you loved playing music and it didn’t matter if you were playing in front of eight kids or two hundred kids”.

While he accepts that being a heavily career-focused kind of band may not necessarily be a bad thing, catering to everybody and being ‘popular’ is simply something that Alexisonfire have never particularly aspired to. “The Warped Tour especially was the place where I felt a little bit out of touch with what was going on and what’s popular”.

This doesn’t mean however that they were ungrateful to be there or that they didn’t want to put on a good show. This writer was lucky enough to catch their set in New Jersey last year, at which Petit was essentially chastising the crowd for not moving around or dancing. He came to a point while on the Warped Tour where he was simply sick of people just standing around and watching them.

“The way I grew up watching music, if people didn’t like a band they’d let them know. They would berate them. If they liked the band or were kind of into the band they’d dance. There was no in-between. Now there’s this new level of in-between where you get out, play a show and there’s just a bunch of people standing there, watching you and not taking much away from it.”

This level of apathy and disconnection is something the band fights strongly against in their music and live performances. On the Warped Tour Petit found himself in an aggressive place where he just needed to yell at people to wake up. “I wanted to play, put a little bit of aggression into it…I’d rather that if you don’t like us, boo us, throw shit at us because that means way more to me than if you’re just standing there taking it in. It’s boring on all fronts. It’s boring for you, it’s boring for me. Don’t waste my time, walk away”.

Their unyielding attitude and philosophy concerning their music has recently generated tension with fans. Alexisonfire have always remained true to themselves regardless of outside opinion, and their deliberate distancing from their screamo roots has caused them to lose a number of fans along the way. This was not unexpected on their part and was something that happened even with the release of 2006’s Crisis.

Petit explains that there are two camps that inevitably form as a result of a band’s musical progression. The first is those who are looking for a very specific kind of sound and do not possess specific artistic interest in the band, and for example if Alexisonfire did not provide that sound they would go elsewhere. The second group, who Petit is more interested in, is those genuinely keen to chart the musical progression of the band.

“The kids who come out and just shout incessantly for us to play songs off our first record, I mean yeah, we’ll play some of those songs and they’re good, but you have to realise that when you have eight years between you and a song that you wrote, that song was almost written by a different person. If you’re a fan of this band, you shouldn’t expect for us to do exactly what you want us to do.”

Petit names Nick Cave as one of his favourite artists because due to the songwriters refusal to remain the same between albums. Each of Cave’s albums is starkly different from the previous, and Petit says it makes him appreciate Cave as a musician even more. It’s a mindset that Alexisonfire has tried to emulate.

An unexpected turn for the band on Old Crows/Young Cardinals is single The Northern, which is an adaptation of an old slave hymn called Roll Jordan. Many fans were surprised and even concerned at this slower-burning sound and the overtly religious themes contained in the lyrics. Petit explains however that their choice of song had nothing to do with the religious meanings, but everything to do with their love of music.

“Dallas and I had been getting into a lot of pre-war blues and it was so geeky. Music from the 20s, old blues…”. During this exploration, they were able to delve into the history of popular music and it took them all the way back to the very first blues hymns sung by slaves in North America.

“The blues was played by pimps, drug dealers, bootleggers and murderers. It was the devil’s music at the time and it influenced rock and roll. It was the first music that brought rock and roll in, and rock and roll became punk and all the things that are great about music today”.

Roll Jordan was a song that influenced the very first blues players in history, and Petit explains that their choice to adapt it into Alexisonfire was a throwback to the roots of the type of music they play today. On one level, he says they consider music to be their closest thing to spiritual religion. It is a fascinating timeline to trace and the pure love he has for music is almost infectious in his explanation of the song choice.

“Some Methodist was handing that [song] out in churches in the South. Some player took a few chords from that and created some of the first blues riffs. Then it became Skip James, Robert Johnson …and then that became all the good R ’n B players, and that became the Stooges and MC5, and that became the Ramones …as far as musical lineages go, that’s the beginning of counterculture in America.”

Alexisonfire take their music very seriously and other bands, particularly in the young punk scene, would do well to follow their example. Their devotion to their craft is admirably unwavering and somewhat rare in today’s music culture. Petit says they make music and albums for themselves and if people like it, it’s just a bonus.

However, this does not equate to pretentious and disconnected noisemaking as evident in their heartfelt, raucous and sometimes dangerous live shows. Recently a case of a broken barricade at a concert in Vancouver resulted in some trampling and more than 20 injuries. The band took it personally upon themselves to make sure all the audience members’ details were taken down for free tickets and a meet and greet to a future show.

Their love for their music is matched only by their love for their fans- and Australian fans are no exception. In another musical push for the band, a digital and vinyl EP called Dog’s Blood is currently in the works due for release before the end of the year, which promises to be another interesting listen and something uniquely Alexisonfire.

Alexisonfire play Australia this October:

Thursday 7th October – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Friday 8th October – UNSW Roundhouse, Sydney
Sunday 10th October – Palace Theatre, Melbourne
Monday 11th October – HQ, Adelaide
Wednesday 13th October – Metropolis, Perth