Interview: Montreal’s East End Radicals prepare for ‘Zero Hour’

Was the writing process for Zero Hour different than in the past?

I think when we started, people would come in with a whole song, this one was a bit more collaborative. We kind of had a deadline to meet, because we had a tour that we could go on if we met this deadline, it was right in January of last year. We were writing songs, and we had good ones, but we weren’t sure if we had like, 10 bangers, you know? And the last 4 we had written were really good, and so we were like, “should we record it now, are we ready?” So what we did was we took 4 songs that we had written that were really good, and that became the Generation Checkout EP, and so we decided instead that we were going to record those 4 songs and make a 7” vinyl, which was cool because that was something that we did ourselves. We paid for it, and did it all. Bill Stevenson (The Descendents) from The Blasting Room mastered it, it cost a fortune but it was just cool to say. It sounds great, the record sounds cool. It was cool that we had a 7”, it made us feel like a real punk band. We did that last summer and toured behind it, and in the meantime we kept writing more songs. And so we wrote more, until we had the 12 songs that make up Zero Hour. We recorded those with Rene Garcia (The Brains). I think the first record is more street-punky and more positive, this one is a bit edgier, it has a bit of a darker tone to it. They have the same kind of tone lyrically. They’re still about working-class problems, but before, I always characterized it as the first song on the first record, “Up and Over,” that song’s really positive and catchy. But on Zero Hour, we’re actually talking about what the real problems are; this one is really focusing on things that are happening to us, and people we know.

What do you attribute that to? More touring, and seeing more of the world around you?

We’re older, there’s a reality to that. But it’s true with touring, on our first tour with The Real McKenzies, we were young and just thought, “this is amazing!” And we still love touring, but you get out there and see what’s going on, and see that there’s a business part to this too, and we’re not always hitting on that part, you sort of face reality a little bit. We took the idea of Zero Hour to be all these things in the world, global turmoil, environmental issues and your personal problems, everything seems to be collapsing to this one point, it seems to be building to this epic moment that’s going to happen. Is it a good thing, is it a bad thing, you’re not sure really.

That’s what we felt, this anxious and nervous feeling that the plan that we had for ourselves, when you’re a kid and you’re growing up and your parents tell you what your life is going to be, I think young people are realizing now that that’s not going to happen for us. Straight up, it’s not going to happen. And so we have to come up with this new plan for our future. Our relationships are different, our work is different, everything. That’s what the idea of the album is about, that the future is so uncertain for us.

East End Radicals play a release show for Zero Hour tomorrow at Petit Campus (57 Prince Arthur East), with Society’s Ills and The Scally Cap Brats. $10, 8:00pm.