best time you could get into things. When you are in high school all your friends dish shit out, check this band out, check that band out. Its the best time for a young mind to absorb all that kind of stuff. It pretty much paved my way. Lots of Slayer for an angry teenager.
A. (Chris) For me, I have to say it was the same thing as Jimmy, never stop listening to Kiss. Same with Dimebag, he is probably my favourite guitar player ever. Pantera all the time. Shit tons of Thin Lizzy and the San Francisco Bay Area thrash scene was a huge influence on me. So bands like Exodus, Testament, so on and so forth. What really hit me which made me want to play crossover at a certain point was when Municipal Waste started becoming really big. For a long time Crossover was like a dirty word, especially here in Canada, except for Montreal where there was never really any scene where punks and metalheads could get together and do some stuff. Thanks to Municipal Waste and other bands like Cross Examination and Gamma Bomb, so on and so forth it's really starting to come back to the forefront of metal. So I gotta credit those guys for keeping me stoked on it too and seem like a plausible thing to do.
A. (Costa) For me high school was mainly Metallica. A lot of Metallica. More Metallica. Megadeth, Slayer, Pantera. Especially for high school, that was really what I was listening to. I started playing guitar when I was 14, that was right around high school. I'm older so you didn't have CDs, you had to be rich to buy a CD. I wasn't, so I had to buy cassettes. So I was learning guitar on my knees in front of the cassette player, playing "Justice For All", press play, what's that note, try to find it on my guitar, press rewind, play again, try to find it again, it was like that. It was a work in progress. That was it.
Q. The Edmonton Muse likes to focus on local content. When you have time to actually go out and listen to bands, what is your favourite local bands to go out and see?
A. (Chris) Skullfist! I actually played in Skullfist too when I was a little baby kid, when I was 16.
A. Jimmy) You have to check out Harlot, it's one of the sickest fucking bands coming out and Derane from the Gold Coast they are fucking awesome, check those guys out. Hidden Intent. So many, so many, Asylum. Elm Street they are more a traditional-like trad sort of heavy band but they are fucking good band.
A. (Chris) For me local bands, it would be a split between Toronto and Montreal. So for Toronto it would be High Life, which are a couple of boys from an old band I used to play in called Midnight Malice which was actually kind of came from Skullfist too. Rough boys are fantastic. Pale Mares really great. In Montreal, Dealer, Phenomenon, Mutank. Chemical Wave for sure which is a really great crossover band too. Hopefully they get the chance to come out here as well because those guys are just a good time all of the time. If you even have the chance to walk around Montreal and go into any bar or venue that is playing music, usually you are going to see something pretty rad.
A. (Costa) As for me, Toronto one that you left out would be, Vespiria. They are incredible musicians. And Fatality. And Montreal a shout out to my best friends, from Final Hero who are also working on coming out West and rocking with you guys. Disastra, depends on what you like, who you like to party with.
Article by Rebecca Rotten
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