Edmonton Rock City: Detroit Have a History of (Power) Violence

Sam, we hardly knew ye

Singers in Detroit seem to have a lifespan rivaling Spinal Tap drummers. We've yet to bid farewell to 2012 and the prolific Edmonton power violence band has gone through a hat trick of mic-men. Exeunt Rhys and Sam; enter Cory stage right. Though they have two more months to make it a four pack on the year, band mainstays Isaac (drums) and Emmett (guitar) seem to think that noob Cory just might have some staying power.
"Singers are pretty much like bass players, you don't reeeaaally need them," Emmett hedged. "Fortunately, now we have someone who can do both! But Sam, of course, will be dearly missed, and I'm super stoked to be playing with Cory. He's got super awesome Infest-esque vocals that land perfectly in the middle between Rhys and Sam, and as for stability, this will have to be the most stable we've ever been as far as singers go."
Cory takes over for Sam, who brought the beast on Detroit's self-titled hit and run from just a few months ago. The band knew from the beginning that Sam would be a stopgap after the band lost first vocalist Rhys, and the new guy was careful to pay tribute to his immediate predecessor.
"Sam is an amazing vocalist with some crazy range. I definitely don't have that range of super intense growls and crazy high screams," Cory said. "The best I can describe it is that this is probably the angriest Detroit has ever sounded. As far as stability goes, I like to think my run with Detroit is going to outlast Sam's. Everyone knew he was moving from Day 1, and that he would only be in the band till they found a more permanent vocalist. So far it seems everyone is reacting positively to what I bring to Detroit."
Cory finds the band coming off a musical high. They've put out two solo efforts, a split with Robocop, and a spot on the Monomaniac compilation in 2012 and have an upcoming split with Dysplasia (Cory's prior band where he logged bass duty), a split tape with Shooting Spree and Prison Violence as well as an upcoming full length record. While the Dysplasia split will be the final release to feature Sam, Cory will set vocals to tape (or bytes) from there.
Their recent self-titled record found Detroit at their most ferocious and violent, not so much straddling as bludgeoning the line between grindcore and modern power violence. Isaac said playing shows with Shooting Spree, sixbrewbantha and Cooked and Eaten pushed Detroit into faster, more ambitious territory. It's something the drummer plans to carry over to the band's first full length.
"I wanted to write more grindcore-influenced blasting noise," Isaac said. "My vision for the LP is mostly that same kind of ‘grindviolence’ while still retaining some of the more experimental elements, but we're only half done writing it, so it could still go in a number of directions. Plus Sam grinded way harder then Rhys did, so going that direction felt pretty natural."
Detroit describe the new songs as a blend of their recent grinding violence lashings, maybe with a tad of experimenting for kicks and assorted impromptu madness.
"We have about half of it recorded already so I think when we overcome our laziness we'll throw a couple of songs on the internet, but who knows how long it will take us to write/record the last half," Emmett said. "I can't say I want to stray too far from the sound we have going on right now in regards to experimentation. However, a lot of our newer songs were written on the spot, so who knows what will happen. Essentially I'm just having way too much fun ripping off my favourite bands."
"The Robocop split was recorded about a year and a half ago now, and on there we were all like 'no distortion for like 30 seconds!,' or 'clean singing!,' but since then we’ve grown a ton as a band and we can do way better now," Isaac added. "I’ve also got way better at drums even since the self-titled EP, so the tempos have picked up a bit more and there’s more weird, tech shit going on. It’ll probably end up on [Grindcore Karaoke] but IF ANY LABELS WANNA PUT IT OUT ON VINYL HIT UP isaachorne2@gmail.com. WE REALLY WANNA HAVE IT ON A 12-inch."
[Ya think dude really wants to see it come out as a physical record, eh? But if you've seen the gorgeous job Give Praise did on the Detroit/Robocop split you can maybe understand his enthusiasm.]
For Cory's part, he said he's waiting for his crack at the studio (aka the basement) to start layering on his vocals.
"It's always awesome to show up at jam and find out these guys have written even more songs. It really keeps thing refreshing knowing that aside for one or two staples, our set list is going to be different every show," he said. "I'm extremely excited for the full-length, and would love to keep grinding out more splits if people want to do them with us. I've been in a band for two years that has yet to really release anything (The upcoming split with Detroit being the first), so the idea of being in a band that already has even more lined up gets me extremely stoked."
What also stokes Cory's furnace is the cyclical resurgence of the power violence sound, rediscovered, reincarnated and reinvigorated for a new century of pissed off teens desperate to push punk to its physical and emotional borders. Unlike Nietzsche's horror in the face of the eternal recurrence, Detroit embrace the latest wave of abbreviated, blasting hardcore and the fellow travelers who brought the sound back.
"The resurgence PV 'scene,' if you will, seems populated by a lot of teens and young adults like ourselves who never got to be a part of that original '90s power violence era," Cory said. "We never got a chance to see our favorite bands live. We never got to walk down the street in a Crossed Out shirt that we got at the show a few days before. We're the same pissed off kids just 20 years late to the game. We want to fill that void that seems to exist in our lives and follow in the footsteps of what our grinding forefathers did before us. That said, like the guys put it, we don't want to worship the same bands or rip them off; we just want to play music as loud and fast as we want and get stoked on it."