With only days to go before Calgary technical death metal band Widow’s Peak’s first ever cross-Canada tour, guitarist Chris McCrimmon found himself in a very un-metal situation.
“To be perfectly honest with you, my wife and I are going to see the Backstreet Boys tomorrow night…” McCrimmon said last week. “So I have to find a really ’90s outfit and frost my tips and stuff in time for that and then try and revert back to somewhat normal before Friday.”
The band – McCrimmon, bassist Mike Jones, guitarist Scott Cressman, vocalist Matt Yeomans and drummer Patricio Cereceda – kicked off their Crusty Cross Canada Cruise Tour with a hometown show on July 26 and on Aug. 5 they’ll be in Nanaimo for a show at the Cambie.
Last year Widow’s Peak released their debut EP Graceless, a self-produced six-song set that McCrimmon describes as a stylistic “mixed bag” with songs that are “drastically different from one another” while remaining cohesive as a unit. He said Graceless “flirts” with most of the sub-genres within extreme metal while avoiding the clichés.
“We found that by the end of writing the EP we were really starting to dig in and find our own musical identity,” McCrimmon said. “We’re not childhood friends or anything. It’s not like we grew up listening to the same bands. We all met for the purpose of starting a band so it was a lot of discovery musically and within each other personally.”
McCrimmon said the EP has been well-received in the year since it came out and he suspects its diverse mix of genre influences is key to Graceless‘s success. He said they’ve been hearing “surprising and humbling” feedback from across Western Canada and beyond.
“Hearing people from across the globe is pretty cool but I guess that’s just one of the main advantages of living in the internet age,” McCrimmon said.
This summer Widow’s Peak is bringing that record east of the Prairies for the first time.
“Most of us haven’t even been to most of places we’re going to,” McCrimmon said. “So it’s a good excuse to kind of have a vacation that generates zero money.”
WHAT’S ON … Widow’s Peak plays the Cambie on Aug. 5. Doors at 8 p.m., show at 9. $10 cover.
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