Champions in blending classic heavy metal, hard rock, and 80’s hair metal, Canadian shredders Striker unleashed their sixth studio album ‘Play To Win’ on October 26 via their independent label Record Breaking Records.. While on their European tour, lead guitarist Tim Brown had a chat with The Rockpit’s Oliver Yeudall about the new songs plus everything Canadian, Kemper and Toto.
Oliver: How are you doing today, Tim?
Tim: Doing good, we’re just driving from Frankfurt. We played a show in Frankfurt last night, our last show with Skull Fist on our European tour. Now we’re on our way down to Spain doing some headlining shows of our own, so looking forward to starting the party in sunny old Barcelona.
Oliver: Yeah I hear Barcelona is a great place to play. So how’s the European tour going at the moment?
Tim: It’s been going really well. I think all of our German shows were sold out or pretty close to it, which is pretty great. I mean, it’s definitely always great to see all those smiling faces shreddin’ out there in the audience. But they were packed shows like I said. We’ve always had a really great fanbase in Germany especially, but we’re going down to Spain because we’ve always had a great fanbase there too. You know, all over Europe. We often play Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, a bunch of places that have always been great for us.
Oliver: That sounds awesome and yeah, I wish I could do that tour too. Sounds like great fun. So I guess the big question is, how long until you do an Australian tour?
Tim: Well we keep trying. We definitely want to come down to Australia. I mean, one thing that’s nice for us is that we don’t really know too many foreign languages, so going somewhere that speaks English is a nice bonus for us. But yeah, we keep trying to come down to Australia and [we’re] especially trying to get into Asia and the surrounding countries. We keep barking up that tree, so hopefully sooner rather than later.
Oliver: Sounds good. I’ve also had a listen to the new album “Play To Win” and I think it’s fantastic. When you guys were writing it, did you have a specific concept in mind?
Tim: Not really. I think we just approached the song writing with, everybody kinda comes up with whatever we want, or they want I guess you could say. We kinda sit down and we look at everything, we go through and start picking the best material. I think because we write so often, I mean we’ve done three albums in three years, that a lot of writing happens very quickly at times. Often times someone will get in a certain mood and they’ll put out, I dunno, ten songs in a certain…I wouldn’t say style or genre or anything, but they have a certain kind of feel. Often times a lot of the songs end up on an album, maybe a lot of the writing is influenced by the band that we’re touring with at the time. Different things like that. It wasn’t specifically a giant, conscious push to write songs in a certain way, although we did try to experiment with new things and try new things. But a lot of it is, like, sit[ting] down with a guitar and see what comes out.
Oliver: Oh ok, does that mean you guys write through jamming with each other?
Tim: Not really. Most of the time Dan [Cleary] our vocalist does a lot of the writing and I do a little bit as well. But most of the time it’s sit down at your computer, pick up a guitar and just start noodling and hopefully, when you hit record, it’s something that sounds halfway decent.
Oliver: Sounds good. With your guitar and your gear, what do you have at the moment in your signal chain? What have you got there to give yourself that unique sound?
Tim: We just use a Kemper, which is a digital guitar amp thing and it sounds really great. It profiles your amp, basically steals the soul of your tube amp and recreates it digitally. We don’t have anything anymore other than those Kempers [laughs]. Makes touring easy that’s for sure and recording actually.
Oliver: Yeah, ’cause this is the Kemper that’s like its own singular unit, you just plug and play when you need it?
Tim: Yeah basically, it’s pretty much like a guitar computer if you want to think of it that way. You just plug your guitar in and you don’t need any other pedals, you don’t need anything. You can just plug it straight into your computer if you’re recording, for live it plugs straight into the mixing desk so you don’t even need to have a guitar cabinet. It just makes life super easy and it sounds really great. You’re using it for any live or recording, it’s a really excellent tool to have as a guitarist
Oliver: Oh excellent. So I’m guessing you’ve got one of them on tour with you at the moment?
Tim: We sure do, we have two actually.
Oliver: I’m guessing it’s a nice thing to have! Is there anything else about the Kemper you enjoy?
Tim: Well the nice thing with the Kemper is you can make it sound like whatever you want. Like I said if you have your favourite two bands, you just plug it in, steal the soul and then it’s recorded there forever. And if you, say, want a different snapshot or tone that your favourite amp makes, you can do that, whether it’s the amp’s clean channel or amp’s distortion channel, whatever, you just save it. The Kemper itself has a lot of effects built in, it has really great delays and reverbs, chorus effect, stuff like that. You just put that on and away you go, you’re off to the races. It’s super awesome. I used to have delay pedals, the tuner, blah blah blah. Now it’s just boom, Kemper, done.
Oliver: I guess it’s a bit of a swiss army knife eh. Going back to the album, I was wondering if there was any particular song that you’re especially proud of?
Tim: We’re actually really proud of all the songs. I mean that’s a terrible answer I’m sure [laughs], but for this album in particular, often times if you’re working on an album you’re listening to every song thousands of times with different versions. It can be fatiguing, mentally or emotionally listening to a song over and over and over again. [It] can be easy to get tired of your own music, but with this album I really enjoy listening to every single song, which is really great. One thing that we’re really excited about is some of the slower paced songs that we’re able to put on the album. Just because it’s something new that we haven’t really done too much with and that we’re able to experiment with, those new kind of sounds.
Oliver: Cool. So, when you’re preparing for an album like this, do you jam with other people’s songs as well, like if you want to get a certain mood, or are there any particular musicians who influence you?
Tim: Yeah well on this album in particular when we were writing it, we were listening to a lot of Toto, especially on tour. Their album “The Seventh One”, maybe some of that snuck in there that’s for sure. But yeah we listen to all kinds of different music, especially on tour [when] you’re stuck in a van or a bus for a week on end.
Oliver: I have to admit Toto wasn’t one of the bands I was expecting, but they are really good!
Tim: Haha yeah. Well it’s the album “The Seventh One” of theirs. They have a lot of different kinds of music but, I dunno, for whatever reason that album was like wow! Kicked our ass.
Oliver: I want to listen to more Toto after this! In Canada, what’s the metal scene like at the moment?
Tim: Canada has a pretty great metal scene. Interestingly enough we just did a North American tour with fellow Canadians Unleash The Archers, which was a really great tour. We had I think a string of about ten sold out shows in a row on the east coast of the United States. The US is a really tough market and we’re playing big venues like Chicago’s, stuff like that and they’re sold out. That’s basically unheard of for two younger Canadian acts. [Canada’s scene is] doing well and of course we’re on tour now, I guess technically our tour with Skull Fist has ended and we’re here by ourselves. I mean we did the Skull Fist tour in Europe, we did fifteen shows with them and now we’re doing five shows of our own. There’s a lot of good Canadian talent out there kickin’ ass all over the globe.
Oliver: Have you had much chance to do any sightseeing while you’re been over there?
Tim: Haha no not really. It’s always tough to do anything other than, get to the venues, set up, soundcheck. By the time you’ve done everything you have maybe, oh, an hour free time and then most of the time if you have that hour you’re like ‘Oh man I need to have a nap’ as it’s so hard to get sleep on tour, take care of yourself. Usually sightseeing is not the priority, but if we can squeeze it in, we try.
Oliver: Fair enough. About taking care of yourself, have you got a good routine for keeping yourself fit and healthy?
Tim: I wish! We play for over an hour every night, so that definitely gets us sweating and then of course the glorious load-in and load-out, which is always lots of fun lifting heavy things. Yeah for the most part not really, just drinking lots of beer.
