I ’ m glad that we met them , without them we wouldn ’ t get to do this it ’ s awesome .
Counterparts have been touring relentlessly for the past year or so and well into next year . What have been your favourite places you ’ ve visited on your travels ?
We usually prefer North American stuff as it ’ s always cool . Just because it ’ s like it is close to home and sometimes it ’ s not . It ’ s where I think we do the best . My favourite place to go is Australia I ’ m really looking forward to going back there and back to Japan too . I mean the UK too , like every time we come here we always look forward to it . But I ’ m definitely looking forward to going back to Australia but that ’ s more of a self-thing . The shows are awesome too but I get to miss Canadian Winter and just be in Australian Summer so that right there is just great . We planned this right , we ’ re going in January , so it ’ s like ok I ’ ll see snow for a couple of weeks , then I ’ ll be locked in the studio for a couple of weeks then we ’ re off to Australia . I just wanna stay warm and try not to be around snow so much so it ’ s really cool we get to go somewhere where it ’ s gunna be hot as hell for the time that we ’ re there and I ’ m looking forward to it .
Any crazy tour stories from the last tour ?
B - Not so much . It ’ s nothing crazy it ’ s just kinda what you would expect . Specifically with this tour , me personally I ’ ve been friends with everybody in this package for a while now and we all sleep a foot from each other and we ’ re all on this bus together . At times it can get a little rowdy and usually we gamble a lot and a couple of us play a lot of magic . Our tour manager got blessed in Nirvana and a lot of people had their shirts off last night but it ’ s nothing particularly crazy however it can get a little bit out of hand but I love it . I would say I prefer it happening here on the bus than happening in a van because at least if I ’ m over it I can upstairs in a van I ’ m just kinda stuck .
So you ’ ve toured with loads of big metalcore names like Parkway Drive and Architects to name a few . What kind of feedback would you say you get from the hardcore community when you tour with these sort of acts ?
B - I mean I would consider us more of a metalcore band than a hardcore band to begin with . I think that when we first started we trying to go for that carrier , killing dream with a little splash of metalcore and hardcore wasn ’ t extremely receptive to it . Which is fine , people are allowed to like what they want . But as soon as we announced that tour with Parkway Drive and We Came As Romans we saw the comments and people being like “ oh what the hell , you guys are going out with those bands ” but in my mind I ’ ve gotten pretty good at ignoring stupid comments .
To begin with that was definitely weird though because well if you like our band and we ’ re suddenly given this shot to play in front of like … for example , with the Parkway Drive tour I used to ask every night who ’ s seeing us for the first time and at least 1000 arms would go up and it ’ s like cool , this is sick and that means that if we were to do a headliner and 50 of those 1000 that put the their hands up come to the headline show it just means that the band is gunna be able to be a band longer .
We don ’ t compromise what we do and we may be the odd band out on the bill on a lot of tours we do but in my mind it ’ s like well if you wanna listen to the same 5 bands and like the same 1 genre you can do that but I love doing the mixed bill . Some of my favourite tours we ’ ve done we ’ ve gone out with Pop Punk bands . It ’ s cool and it ’ s refreshing and it reminds of back home in the mid-late 2000 ’ s in Ontario . Every night there would be some Deathcore band , then a Hardcore band and then a Pop Punk band would play ; it was cool because everyone just did their own thing and that ’ s when local shows would have like 300-400 kids at them . That always gets me excited because it ’ s like , hey we ’ re gunna be the weird band ! Let us just go do our thing , do what we do and if people like it : sick . If people hate it then like : whatever , I still have fun . If you ’ re miserable go outside I ’ ll just keep doing my shit and hanging out so .
So you were talking about the Music scene in Ontario what was that like ?
B- Back in the day the scene in Ontario used to be crazy . It ’ s not what it was but like it was worse . There was actually a time when it was pretty rough and it just happened to coincide with when we were able to tour which was kind of a bummer . Cause it was like , “ hey we ’ re finally done with high school ! We can tour now !” this was in like 2009-2010 and it was like there were no shows happening so we were like , “ oh ok I guess we ’ ll go to the US then and do that ” I guess it kinda forced us to go off and do our own thing and make money for ourselves in other places . What I think is cool is that from that people back home started to miss us a little bit so we would come through and play more shows and luckily the scene got back to the way it was .
Words by Sam Taylor | Photo by Ben Lemoual
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