Heavy metal music is generally either loved or hated but according to Calgary band Fall City Fall, it is an emotion filled musical genre.
Drummer Andrew Higgins says the message is important and that the bands who are most influential are those who make a statement with the music they compose.
“Hardcore is unique to that because so many people come for these reasons, like most bands play for Rock Against Bush or they promote veganism or Christ. That is the advantage we have through this medium; to connect as much as possible.”
Fall City Fall is a six-member band that, according to their website aspire to reawaken the metalcore genre and hardcore Canadian scene.
Like other members in the band, guitar player and vocalist Scott Olyphant grew up and found his place in the Calgary hardcore scene. Something he would like to help preserve.
“The Canadian Hardcore scene is one big family or it’s what it should be, at least,” says Olyphant.
Olyphant says a problem in the scene is that people do not seem to care as much anymore and therefore are not supporting bands and going to shows.
Higgins says the problem is not the supporters but the bands.
“The bands aren’t giving back in the way that we can,” says Higgins. “We [as a genre] are not writing music that’s honest to the people who want to hear it or to ourselves.
Higgins says real emotion, real anger and real happiness in the music elicits this honesty.
“You want to relate to the audience. Hardcore and metalcore have strayed from musicality. You go to the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and the music they play, hundreds and hundreds of years old, can honestly tell a story. We try to do that with distorted guitars, angry drums and screaming,” says Higgins. “That is why we can write the music that we do. Because we all have something to say.”
The band travelled with guest vocalist Distance A. Bullock, a former resident of Lethbridge. Bullock says there are societal barriers that exist over the heavy music scene in which he believes bands like Fall City Fall can help overcome.
“In my experience it’s contempt prior to investigation,” says Bullock. “We don’t look like Joe Go-work-in-the-office type of people but I challenge anyone to come and talk to us. . . The people in this band have the ability to change the scene because we are actually good people. As soon as we open our mouths I believe people’s opinions will change about us.”
The band is currently on their fourth full Canadian tour. They dropped into Lethbridge to play and promote their album 1629, released last May.
The album unintentionally became a concept album about an old house they lived in while writing and recording the album. They named this house 1629.
The house held many stories of past ghosts and quickly became the focus of the music itself.
“The house literally shaped the album,” says Higgins. “It’s a metaphor for the growth of the band and it is something we only noticed at the end. We realized that we wrote a story about ourselves because of the progression that happened throughout the album. All the highs and lows that were reflected in it were literal. It was a picture we painted over the months we lived there. It literally followed our emotions.”
In a flood of consensus, the entire band, which also includes, Vocalist Keenan Pylychaty and bassist Richard Griffiths agreed.
“It felt like whatever was happening in our lives, the house was responding,” says Pylychaty.
“The house consumed us all,” says Olyphant.
“It was like it wrote itself,” says Griffiths.
“It was like a member of the band,” says Higgins. “Whenever we got to a spot where we were stuck, it was like the song would just come out of the cracks in the walls.”
1629 is available online at fallcityfall.bigcartel.com. For more information on the band visit www.fallcityfall.com.
Photo: (left – right) Andrew Higgins, Richard Griffiths, Scott Olyphant, Jordon Storey, Keenan Pylychaty