A new heavy metal band from Toronto and a Mexican group with a Canadian connection are coming to the Cambie.
Toronto’s Decatur and Sinaloa’s Evilheart are performing at the venue on Oct. 16 for Metal Mondays. Both bands are providing new opportunities for their lead singers.
In 2015, Adam Benito, lead singer for Calgary metal group Train Bigger Monkeys, was asked to fill in as a session vocalist for Evilheart for the “blackened death metal” band during its Canadian tour. The rest of the bandmates – guitarist Adrián Urías, bassist Alejandro Monroy and drummer Rodolfo Rogers – liked Benito so much that they asked him to join the band. Last year he played his first Mexican dates with the group.
“They really made me feel like a brother really quickly,” Benito said.
Benito, who is still a member of Train Bigger Monkeys, said it’s been “strange” to be a member of a band based out of a foreign country, especially since they are unable to regularly play together in person. Evilheart is concluding the touring cycle for their last album, 2014’s Quinquaginta, and are in the process of making a new record. Benito said his bandmates send him music and he adds lyrics. He said it’s been a challenge adjusting to Evilheart’s tone an subject matter.
“The band that I’m in in Calgary here, Train Bigger Monkeys, we tend to write more political satire, more not as serious lyrical content, where this challenges me to write something a little more serious, a little bit more meaningful,” he said. “It presents a challenge that I’m very happy to undertake.”
Guitarist and lead singer Jay (Beard) Sarrazin founded Decatur last year after his previous band fell apart. He said he was “getting deeper into music” and didn’t want to stop playing so he sought out musicians to create something new.
This month Decatur – Sarrazin, guitarist Liam Maguire, bassist Kyle (Tiny Basstank) Clark and drummer Steve (The Animal) Mitchell – released its debut album, Badder than Brooklyn, which Sarrazin called a departure from contemporary heavy metal.
“We hope people dig it. I think it’s something different, it’s something that metal bands just aren’t doing right now,” he said.
“Everybody’s kind of doing the super low tuning and crazy growling and all that stuff and we kind of missed the bands like Metallica and Pantera. They have that heavy sound to them but they also had parts of them where you could feel what was going on, you could get into the music and kind of see a different side of who they were.”
Sarrazin said the goal for the debut album was to reveal as many sides of the bandmates’ personalities and influences as possible. He described the recording process as a “therapeutic adventure.”
“Once we got into the studio we started to evolve a little bit and we really wanted to try to push our own boundaries for what we have done before, because we’ve all been in pretty heavy heavy metal bands, some death metal, some thrash metal,” he said.
“But this time around we kind of wanted to go a different route and maybe explore a little bit more of what we were capable of. Starting the new band was the perfect time for us to do that.”
WHAT’S ON … Evilheart and Decatur perform at the Cambie on Oct. 16 for Metal Monday. The 19-plus show begins at 9 p.m. $10 cover.
arts@nanaimobulletin.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter