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Vice Blog

TORONTO - CAREER SUICIDE IS GETTING TECHNICALLY CRAZY

Career Suicide are a band from Toronto that plays hardcore punkrockandroll that sounds like it could have been recorded in any of the many "heydays" of the genre. Jonah (Fucked Up’s wunderkind drummer) writes the songs, and if you get your information from Vice, you already know about them. But did you know that lead singer Martin is a regular job-jumper? Or that they recently did a one-off show in Norway? Or that drummer Dave Brown for some reason thinks I’m in Blank Dogs? Or that Attempted Suicide, their second LP, is fairly classic? If you’re wearing pink leggings at the moment, you probably didn’t know any of that, or how to dance. Perhaps you will consider not wearing them. Let's talk to Martin!

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Vice: I remember hearing about you switching jobs all the time to make Career Suicide work, which is somewhat normal, but I heard you were sort of going into more high-end gigs without much experience.  Is that true?

Martin: I don't think it's any mystery that being in a band that tours and records is hardly compatible with a full-time job. I must have a hundred grandparents for all the times I've had to suddenly "fly out of town for the funeral"  to go on tour or spend days in the studio. As for getting high-end gigs, I guess I take a DIY approach to work in that I've never been shy to apply for a job that I wasn't technically qualified for, as long as I knew I could figure it out.

You went to England and somehow had fun. Why? How? Where? With who?

To tell you the truth, we'd been passing on the opportunity to go to England for a few years now, specifically because people (especially English people who moved away from the UK) had been telling us that the shows would be poorly attended and those who came would stand around stiffly. For all I know this may ring true for a lot of bands, but it was the opposite reaction for us when we finally toured there in August. A few shows stand out where the entire audience just erupted into a frenzy during our set, leaving the venue and everyone in it totally destroyed, in the best possible way. Who the hell would have guessed a Tuesday night in Liverpool would be so insane?



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How the hell did you wind up going to Norway to play one show?

We played on an island on the west coast of Norway called Froya. There's this guy in his late-40s who lives there: he's a former lieutenant colonel with the Norwegian Military who's basically nominated himself the dictator of culture for the island's 7,000 inhabitants. He happens to be an old punker, and he also happens to be my girlfriend's dad. When they decided to organize this festival the city council voted to fly us over to Norway and play in the middle of a field with bands like Enslaved.


CS is getting technically crazy. The songs are complicated! Are you going to change your name to The Career Suicide Escape Plan? Am I being an asshole?

I don't know if the songs are complicated, but definitely a lot more complicated than you might expect. None of that, of course, is due in any way to me, all I do is scream and shout. From a musical perspective I think there is a lot to the songs. I guess because we spend so much time writing and recording it's apparent to us, but if you listen closely, you'll notice there's a lot of subtlety to the songs. Jonah's a regular Vivaldi, what can I say?

NICK FLANAGAN

PHOTO: MATEUS MONDINI