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

Montreal’s East End Radicals are no strangers to hard work. Since forming the band in late 2009, the punk outfit have toured cross-country twice, self-released a pair of EP’s, and have just released their sophomore LP, Zero Hour, via Stomp / Union Records. Zero Hour is brimming with the same Celtic-influenced breakneck punk rock as the band’s debut LP, Carry On, but with a darker underpinning to the lyrics, reflecting the band’s take on issues like whistle-blowing, and the government’s treatment of Native land issues.

I caught up with Scott Macleod, the band’s vocalist and guitarist, to discuss the inspirations behind Zero Hour, the band’s dedication to touring, and their strong sense of working-class pride.

East End Radicals officially launch Zero Hour with a show on February 12th at Petit Campus, with support from Society’s Ills, and The Scally Cap Brats. For more information, check out the Facebook event here.

Many of your songs have a strong working-class outlook, was that important to convey?

When we first met, we said we were going to write songs that mean something, they’re not going to be ambivalent. You can write whatever you want, but for me, if you’re going to write a punk song, it should be about something, and it shouldn’t be a metaphor. It should be obvious what you’re talking about. That’s what we were into. The bands that we liked were political bands that said stuff, the songs had meaning. I can’t say we’re from the worst neighbourhoods and came up tough, but all our parents worked, we worked. We spend more time working than we get to play with the band. You’ve got to write about your life, and that’s our life. We’re working people. I work as a teacher, so I’m actually in a union. Brent works as a bartender, Matt works a bunch of jobs, he works at Vans, at the Habs store, and he presses our t-shirts, and Eric works at the Apple store. The common thing between all of us is that we’ve worked the jobs that young working people do now. We have service jobs, we’re not part of the old manufacturing jobs that Dropkick Murphys talk about, we’re too far removed from that. But we’re in that new young people working class. A lot of the lyrics are definitely influenced by that.

You guys have done quite a bit of touring so far.

That was the point of the band. When we met, it was like, we weren’t going to be a stay at home band, we were in it for the adventure. We wanted to go as far, and to as many places as we could. When we did our first tour for our EP, we booked it ourselves and we went through Ontario, and that was a huge thing for us. When we got picked up by Stomp, and we got to go out West with The Real McKenzies, that was massive for us. I just remember that we were on the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria, looking at the Pacific Ocean, and like, our little punk band brought us 3,000 kilometers across the continent, that’s why we did it. We wanted to get out there and play, and you have to now, if you want to be bigger than your little city, if you want to be recognized, you have to go out and play for people. You can’t just stay at home, you have to go out and play.

How do you guys juggle your day jobs with all the touring you’ve been doing? 

We lose money! We lose jobs, we lose hours. I’m pretty lucky since my job is stable, I have sick days and things I can take. I have months off in the summer and I have bigger holiday breaks, so we can work around that. But the other guys, they’re all bright guys and they could get better jobs than they have now, but they keep these ones because they’re easy to walk away from to do this kind of stuff.

Why do you think so few Montreal punk bands get it together enough to get out and tour?

I feel like they do. Some bands can get more attention by not having to play too much, just because of their record, or the sort of vibe of the band, people will follow them more.

East End Radicals don’t have an automatic coolness when you see us. People like us after they see us. When we get in their faces and play for them, that’s when people like us.

That’s why we have to go out and play shows. We want to, and it’s critical for us to get people to like our band, so we can do bigger things. We’re about the adventure, and you have to go out there and reach for it, and that means getting out of Montreal for us.

How has the experience with Stomp Records been?

I think any label now is wary to sign a band that doesn’t tour. In punk, if you want to be a quote unquote “commercial punk band,” if you don’t tour, forget about it, you’re done. In other genres you can get away with not playing shows or touring. People think it’s cool on the Internet. For punk, it’s like, if you don’t get out and fucking play in like Oshawa, it’s like, “fuck you, who cares about your band.” That was what they asked, “are you willing to tour?” And we said, “Yes, that’s the only thing we want to do.” To be honest, a CD, what it is nowadays is a business card in some respects. “Here’s our business card, we’re a band, we want to play shows, book us.” To me, the best part of getting onto Stomp was getting into their rolodex of people that can book us shows in Alberta and B.C., where by myself on my laptop, sending out cold e-mails, would’ve never gotten that.

We still remember, we were at practice and we got an e-mail from Matt (Collyer, of The Planet Smashers & Stomp Records) asking if we wanted to open up for The Real McKenzies on tour, and we all loved that band since we were teenagers, so we had a mini freakout in the jam space. They’re good about getting us things like grant money, they’re really plugged into that, to get us all that stuff that makes it somewhat commercially viable, so at least we’re not going to completely lose all our money. And they have great taste too. We already liked a lot of the bands on there. I’m really a believer in the label, and I feel proud to be a part of it. It’s like, the fucking Planet Smashers, they are so huge. The other bands that are on there, even the new bands that they’re signing, it’s a family, it’s not just an office. There’s bands on there that know each other, and we hang out and go to each other’s shows, it’s bigger than just an office or a website. It’s a real unity of musicians, which is cool to be a part of.

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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.