Official Website for the Montreal Technical Death Metal band. Blog, videos, streaming music, merch, social media, press materials, etc.
Posts Tagged 'performance'
General Update, Feb 11th Montreal Gig
Hi! Eric here.
Well, we know we said the next show would be the album launch, but our good friends Endast (http://www.endastmusic.com) requested that we play their album fundraiser show this February 11th in Montreal.
It would have been dumb to say no, so come out and hear a few new tunes, and meet our new full lineup.
Here’s the Facebook event for the show: http://www.facebook.com/events/169417929838887/
Our new album, Perpetuation, is complete and currently being pressed. We’re preparing a ton of good stuff for the launch, so stay tuned, friends! Thanks for your support.
The hardest thing about learning to play the drums (or any instrument) is not being able to play as well as your idols RIGHT NOW. That shit takes time and dedication, and most of all, the ability to control yourself from trying to play as fast as Derek Roddy before you can play a basic rock beat cleanly. Here’s some motherly advice from a fellow drummer who’s not your mom.
1. Start slow.
Before you can blast like Flo Mounier, you’re gonna have to rock like Phil Rudd (AC/DC, for the younger of you reading this:). Learning things at a slower pace will make sure you can play them cleanly and tightly. If you try to play too fast off the bat, you risk playing sloppily, or hurting yourself in the long run from tensing your muscles and tendons.
2. Try different styles.
This is mainly geared towards metal drummers, but can be helpful for everyone. Metal is traditionally a very fast and technical style of music that takes many years to develop. Playing other styles will increase your versatility and ability to play cleanly at different tempos. It’ll also set you apart from a lot of other drummers who have played nothing but metal. For example, there’s nothing more dangerously impressive than a metal drummer with a jazz or fusion background!
3. Consider taking lessons.
When I first started, I didn’t want anyone to tell me how to play the drums. I thought I knew how to do pretty much everything, and what I didn’t I could teach myself. Sure, I taught myself lots of things, but it was sloppy and took longer than it needed to. Taking a few lessons really opened me up to new possibilities I wouldn’t have ever thought of myself. If you don’t like one on one lessons, Youtube has a lot of great drummers sharing their knowledge for free! Search for your favorite drummers, or even just technique ideas from dudes filming themselves at home. Like, *ahem*, this guy:
4. Create a practice routine that’s fun.
The last thing you want to do is make practicing a chore. Come up with some exercises that are beneficial, but that you also enjoy. If you don’t enjoy practicing the instrument you’ve chosen, maybe there’s a different one that suits you better. Or videogames. You should play videogames.
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Jordan has not been playing videogames lately… in fact he just got out of the studio recording drums for Derelict’s upcoming new album, Perpetuation. Check him out playing this preview version of the album’s title track:
It’s hard to begin to explain how awesome this video makes us feel… one of our signature tunes, played in the most metal venue in our home town, with a pit of fans in front of us and the mighty Decapitated‘s banner behind us. Awesome!
Thanks to Montreal Metal Shows for shooting this!
and in case you missed the Polarized live vid that surfaced a few days ago from the same show, here it is:
We had an excellent run of shows, starting with the Decapitated/Decrepit Birth/Fleshgod Apocalypse/Rings of Saturn tour stop on Oct 26th in Montreal. It was amazing to play alongside some of our influences and favorite bands, and the Montreal crowd got there right for the beginning, so we had a great crowd despite it being 6:30pm. Check out this live video of ‘Polarized’:
On Oct 29th we played in North Bay, alongside The Killing Field and many other great bands. This was a classic small-town show, set up in a awesome and spacious curling rink, with a crowd of absolute diehards. We couldn’t ask for anything more!
As studio dates approach, Collin and Max are finishing off recording lead guitar this week, and we’re rehearsing all together to tighten the drum and vocal performances.
We also got some amazing bass lines from our session man Seb Pittet (also plays in Augury), and we’re very excited to have everyone hear those. The album is coming together!
Very often in life we ask ourselves or others how we are influenced by our surroundings. This is true in many walks of life. Our surroundings affect how we dress, what music we listen to and many other things too numerous to list properly right now. As someone who writes music, in this case death metal music, I have to say that my surroundings have had a great impact on my playing and songwriting.
We in Derelict are very fortunate to call Montreal home. Montreal is a very lively and artistic city where you can attend some sort of artistic performance or live a nightlife experience pretty much any night of the week. It’s also a fairly unique city in that the French and English languages live in relative harmony. What is also true about Montreal is that it has a world-class metal scene.
When I was a young teenager and discovering the heavier arts, some of the bands I stumbled upon after the Big 4 were Iced Earth, Opeth, Death, Arch Enemy and Deicide. I was off to a good start when I saw someone mention Cryptopsy in a magazine(that’s right, metal sites were not as common back then). My friend Pat and I first listened to the song “White Worms”. I couldn’t believe that this type of brutal music even existed, let alone that the band was from my hometown! After that life-changing event it didn’t take long for me to realize just how much of a brutal bastion of metal this city really was.
Years later it’s very easy for me to cite a bunch of local bands who have had a tremendous influence on me and other members of Derelict past and present. I don’t know if it’s because of Voivod, but Quebec metal bands, many of which are from Montreal, often seem to have either a technical, progressive or off kilter approach that give it a distinctive sound. Some bands, like Gorguts, even venture into the avant-garde category, literally reinventing how they played their guitars as they went along. This alongside other influences from the United States and Europe have now made Montreal a more diversified metal juggernaut, with famous bands like The Agonist, Blackguard, Beneath the Massacre and the recently defunct Despised Icon all making waves in their respective styles. While that is happening you have bands like Neuraxis, Unexpect, Martyr, Augury that keep pushing their own boundaries. The underground is also kicking it pretty hard with bands like Beyond Creation, Endast, First Fragment, Self-Collapse, Impalement, The Unconscious Mind and many more playing local shows seemingly every week.
The speed, relentlessness and jarring musical direction this city harnesses has resonated in Derelict as well. The eerie tones and chaotic rhythms of our brethren and metal forefathers seem to creep through our songs (or at least some of the ones I write). We are often told that we have the “Montreal” sound. I for one embrace it and am very proud of the strong metal tradition of my hometown. Vive le métal!
Hailing from Montreal, Derelict mixes the brutal and technical elements of the Quebec metal scene with listenable structures and melody, resulting in an unforgiving yet accessible package. The band’s trademark sound has led to comparisons with the likes of Death, Strapping Young Lad, and The Black Dahlia Murder.
In 2009, the release of the Unspoken Words album through Year of the Sun Records marked a kickoff point for Derelict with several national tours, increased media exposure, and greater critical acclaim. The band’s 2011 EP served to preview new material, cement a growing fan base, and set the stage for a new full-length album in 2012: Perpetuation. Mixed and mastered by Chris Donaldson of Cryptopsy, this release contains 12 furious tracks that put forth an upgraded version of what Derelict fans have come to love.
“This album has been long in the making, and saw the band through some intense challenges,” says vocalist Eric Burnet. “We survived our trials and came back much stronger. Perpetuation is streamlined Derelict: it has fast tempos and brutal riffs, but lots of melody and catchiness too. We all pushed ourselves to expand what we could do with our instruments, and we got Sébastien Pittet from Augury playing fretless bass on this thing too!”
With the help of constant touring within Canada, and support for international acts such as Decapitated, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Decrepit Birth, Job For A Cowboy, Whitechapel, The Agonist, Revocation and Threat Signal, the band is expanding its fan base exponentially and is making itself known as a force to be reckoned with.
