Currently celebrating the release of their self-titled album and embarking on a Canadian tour with Killitorous and Erimha, The Apex still have time to sit down and talk about the little things in life, like the metal scene in a little known Canadian town or how they cant come up with secrets. Tyson Taylor, drummer for The Apex, gave us a few moments of his time and told us all about it.
Hey, how are you today?
I’m doing great thanks for asking!
What is the metal scene like in Windsor, ON? Even being from Ontario myself, I don’t hear of any bands coming out of there.
It’s actually shocking more bands aren’t noticed from here because after playing in bands and touring Canada/US for so many years, I can confidently say that some of the best heavy bands are right in Windsor. I’m sure it gets overlooked often due to being so close to Detroit so we miss out on a lot of bigger name shows. Any bigger names in the area would just go to Detroit. In regards to bands it’s tough to stay 3rd party as a few of our members were in some more known projects locally, but I would suggest checking out Dismata (CDN), Closed Casket Funeral, Bloodshoteye (Galy), Searchingforchin, Facedown (Tribunal) and old Corprophemia (CDN). For current bands around here check out Minors, Corrupt Leaders, Grindmother (the viral videos of Corrupt Leaders frontman’s mother screaming to grind.), Dirt and Monolith to name a few.
Can you tell us a bit about The Apex and your roll in the band?
The Apex is a bunch of friends that have been friends and in bands together for 15+ years so it was a no brainer for us to start this new project. We were all living random parts of Canada (ON, AB, PE) and we decided we were all missing that band element in our lives so we all decided to move back to Windsor, ON and take one last shot at the band thing and we are pushing it the hardest this time around. As for my roll in the band, I play drums and put the music together with Steve generally. Outside of the music part I usually book the tours, run social media, order the merch/cd’s, interviews, you name it really. I enjoy taking on that roll and try to keep everything running smoothly in our camp.
You released your self-titled album in February of this year meaning its coming up on a year now, has writing already begun for the next release?
Yes! We have started writing our follow up EP and have one of those songs down for the most part. I can’t confirm how many tracks will be on this EP but we are shooting for 4-6 tracks in total and are looking to make them a bit longer this time around. After this tour in November/December we will be taking the winter off to complete the EP and we hope to have it out for Spring/Summer of 2016.
How did writing for this album start? How could you tell when things were coming out just as you wanted?
It’s funny because the album started with Steve sending me tracks over xbox chat sessions and leaving riffs on my voicemail. He was in Calgary and I was in Charlottetown so we couldn’t be much more further from each other, but when I heard some of those riffs I knew we had to relocate and begin writing in person. The very riffs that brought us together were actually scrapped as we didn’t feel the material was strong enough for the album but they brought us together to start working on the songs that would all end up on the debut album. We had started out with a different singer for a short period of time and to be quite honest, it seemed to spastic and none of the album felt “right” to us. When we acquired Darren (Dismata), literally everything changed and his voice made all the songs feel exactly the way we had intended so I’d have to say that when Darren laid down the first vocal track (You’re Not Dead Yet?) we knew things were coming out exactly how we wanted.
There’s always jokes of bands starting out in their garages, how many citizens of Windsor did you scare the hell out of with your level of Death coming from the house you guys were practicing in?
That’s funny because we do still jam in the same house but luckily it’s an industrial road so there is no noise by-law and no real “neighbors”, just factories. We play with a huge PA and everything cranked which gives us total freedom that some bands might not have I presume. We are moving to a garage in the city so I suspect many police visits soon haha.
Can you talk a bit about the lyrics on the self-titled? Specifically because the album begins with
“Contention: Chapter 2” and ends with “Contention: Chapter 1”?
Darren wrote these lyrics so he might be best to explain it but he’s been covering 3 or 4 extra shifts in a row to have the time to do the tour so he’s working at the moment but I’ll do my best to not butcher it. Basically, the songs were a two-part concept about war and religion. We aren’t a political band really so hopefully that’s not what people took from these two; they were just topics in the media at the time and Darren wanted to write a little about them. Chapter 2 starts the story and is a bit of a Tarantino feeling so this chapter explains how this person has grown into someone who is completely willing to fight and die for their religion. Chapter 1 is at the end and explains how this was basically an innocent child at one time and was pushed towards this way of thinking/brainwashed, etc. and this person (child at this point) didn’t want any of this but is growing into that person willing to die for something he was taught.
What was the actual recording process like? Did most of the album come together before hand or did it start to piece together as you recorded?
We had all of the songs together the way we wanted them before we hit the studio. We recorded the album once all the way through but weren’t happy with the overall sound so we wrote that off as a pre-production and I’m glad we did because we scrapped a weaker song and added Glass Walls which was new at the time and was to be on our 2nd album but that song made our debut much stronger in my opinion. We went and recorded the whole album again with the addition of Glass Walls and we hired Nick Kinnish (Architects/Johnny Truant) to be our engineer and went to Shark Tank Productions studio in Windsor and tracked the album on ProTools and then mixed and mastered over reel to reel so it gave it a much more gritty feeling and more analog touch we were looking for. I’m hoping to do our new EP entirely to tape so it should be a treat for ourselves and the audiophiles out there.
Your next step is a Canadian tour with Erimha, who are actually a favourite of mine, and Killitorous, what’s your set looking like for that tour?
We can’t wait to tour with those guys! They were nice enough to invite us on the road with them and it should be an absolute blast for those three weeks. In terms of the set list, it looks like this:
1. Contention: Chapter 2
2. Promise
3. Means To An End
4. Glass Walls
5. Attack
6. If Detroit River Could Speak
7. Contention: Chapter 1
So this tour will take you up until the beginning of December, then i would assume you’ll take Christmas break, what is the plans to follow in early 2016?
We plan on taking the winter off and we will completely hibernate and work on this new EP. We may play a show here or there but the main focus will be providing everyone with new material that we hope to put out in Spring/Summer of 2016 and we intend on hitting the US for 2 weeks, which will be our first time over there. After that I’m sure we will do some Canada touring as well since we haven’t played the West Coast yet.
Last but not least, do you have any secrets you can share with your fans out there? Also, any announcements you can make or hint at that may be on the way?
I’ve been trying to come up with some secrets but we aren’t too secretive haha. Fans can ask us anything and we will hang out and shoot the shit with them so we don’t have much to hide. I’ve been hinting at a new EP throughout this interview so that should be a dead giveaway that we intend on releasing some new material for you guys in 2016. There are a couple things in the works that I can’t talk about just yet but some good things are on the horizon. Just know, we are out here grinding our hardest and we hope to meet some of you during this tour and beyond. Cheers and thanks for having us!
Pick up the album HERE
like The Apex on FACEBOOK
Pick up the album HERE
like The Apex on FACEBOOK
No comments:
Post a Comment