By Andrew Bansal
Hailing from Edmonton, Alberta, Canadian band Striker formed in 2007 and have already played their part in waving the flag of classic heavy metal through some excellent music and a solid amount of touring across Canada and Europe, presenting songs filled to the brim with righteously old-school metal and decorated with enjoyably cheesy lyrics. Their third full-length album ‘City Of Gold’ is set for release in North America on September 9th via Napalm Records, a set of tunes that sees the band blend thrashier elements along with the signature classic style they’ve portrayed over the past seven years. Last week, I spoke to vocalist Dan Cleary to discuss the new album, Canadian metal, touring, lyrical themes, great vocalists and other things. Read the conversation below.
Dan, it’s good to have you on Metal Assault. I was checking out the new album ‘City Of Gold’, and as opposed to the previous album ‘Armed To The Teeth’ which was more focused on traditional and power metal elements, this one is thrashier. Do you agree with that?
Yeah, definitely. We sort of went for that on this one too. On each album we’ve done a little bit of a different style, almost, all in the same vein, but this time we definitely did a lot more heavier thrashy stuff.
You’ve been able to crank out albums every two years. You’ve been creative and hungry enough to be able to do that.
Yeah, it’s awesome. We’re already ready to do another one too (laughs).
That’s great, man. Being from where you are, you are always compared to bands like Exciter, Razor and all that. How do you really feel about that?
I think it’s a positive thing. There’s a lot of great bands that have come out of Canada, like you said Exciter, and Annihilator. I was a huge Annihilator fan long before I started the band. They’re one of the bands we’ve looked up to as Canadian artists. So yeah, it’s a good thing.
But do you feel that in this generation it’s up to you to represent that whole Canadian old-school metal thing?
May be a little bit. We sort of share that load with a few other bands like Skullfist, Axxion, Cauldron and stuff. Those are all friends of ours, even though we live pretty far apart. We keep in touch and we’ve got our own little community kind of thing going.
Coming back to the new album, production-wise did you feel that you had to do anything different to capture the heavier sound?
Yeah, we were conscious about that before we started. We wanted to do the songs justice by having the right sound and the right tones to the album. We wanted more of a European drum sound as well, so when we went to record in Sweden with Frederik Nordstrom, we knew that it was the sound we wanted for the album.
With this style of music, its major market is obviously still in Europe. For your band how has the reception been over there? I believe you have been playing quite a few shows there.
Yeah we’ve been there a bunch of times. It’s always been really good and it’s been getting better every single time we go. We’re about to go again in September and tour with Bullet all across Europe, so yeah we’re always looking forward to going there.
As for your plans for the States, do you have anything coming up? It’s usually been hard for a lot of Canadian bands, even the likes of Cauldron.
We do have a tour lined up with Onslaught and Artillery for the US and Canada, and that’s in October-November. So we’ll finally be there with that, which is pretty sweet.
It’s been a while for you since you toured the States, I believe?
We’ve actually never been to the States! It’s a little bit more difficult to tour there. When we go to Europe we don’t even need visas and stuff. We do need it for the UK but everywhere else in Europe you can just come and play. But the States is more of a process, there’s more paperwork that you have to do to come in, if you want to do it legally (laughs).
So, in Europe they don’t really question you when you show up there to basically do business by playing shows and making money?
It’s never been a problem. We usually bring CDs with us and stuff like that, and when we go through customs and ask what it is, they’re more interested in talking to you about your band than anything else! It’s pretty cool.
In your albums that you’ve put out so far, I like the fact that you’ve adopted a cheesy lyrical theme, which is fun and necessary in classic metal. Who in the band comes up with that stuff and how do you write it?
I write most of the lyrics, and I just write about the sort of stuff that I’m into, like I’ve written a lot of songs that are about movies I like (laughs), such as ‘Road Warrior’ which is about Mad Max. The song ‘The White Knight’ is loosely based on Gandalf. So, we’re not an overly serious band. I mean, we do take it seriously but at the same time we’re sort of tongue-in-cheek with everything.
On ‘City Of Gold’ are there any particular topics that you’ve explored lyrically, or is it just more of a general thing all over the place?
It’s a little more all over the place on this album. It’s slightly more serious actually, because I’ve been writing more about things that are going on in the world right now. Revolution seems to be a huge thing that’s happening all over, so I try to keep up with that and have written some things about it. I’m also super into conspiracy theories but I try not to put too much of it into the actual music.
So, are you a curious explorer of those theories or do you believe in any of them?
I think when I first started looking at them I was pretty into it, but after a while, there’s just so many that it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not. So I’m just more interested in them for their different perspective more than anything.
Vocally, you hit a lot of high notes in Striker’s music, and one thing I always wonder when I hear such vocals is, is the vocalist thinking about whether he or she will be able to do this 10 years down the road. Do you think about that?
(Laughs) When we first started out, that was definitely not something I even thought about, but the longer we do this the more it becomes a thing. We’re about to do 60 shows in a row, so I think we’re starting to strategically put backing vocals in some parts. Even if you listen to Iron Maiden live stuff, Bruce doesn’t necessarily do exactly the same as on the album. So, may be if I’m getting too tired on the road we’ll probably have to wimp out on some notes, but I try to do as much as I can live.
When it comes to this kind of music and bands that have been around for a while that wrote these crazy fast songs back then, if they cannot do it now some of them tend to down-tune those songs. What’s your take on that?
I don’t know, it’s sort of just how it is, I guess. You look at say Ozzy, the last time he came to Edmonton, it was in drop C or something like that. It was just tuned so low. May be he is singing all of it or may be someone else is singing (laughs). There’s always these rumors about the keyboard player behind the curtain singing half of the lyrics. But people are there to hear the songs and usually it’s still pretty good. So, I don’t mind it, it’s too bad but sometimes these guys get older and just can’t do it the same way, except for Bruce Dickinson who just seems to get better as he gets older.
Exactly, man. It’s like he’s aging backwards! On that note, what other vocalists would you say have always been good and still are?
Yeah! It’s crazy. Well, we saw Halford not long ago and I think he was still pretty good. Within the last three or four years may be he has sort of slipped off a little bit, but I remember we saw him at the Banging Head Festival in 2008 and it was awesome. Biff Byford from Saxon is also super-good still. His voice kind of changed, but it’s still really awesome.
Saxon has been one band in the recent past that nobody really has said anything bad about that I’ve heard of. They’re always amazing.
Yeah, they stay pretty consistent. I remember our guitar player Chris was just telling me the other day that Saxon did some two-hour long set where they just took requests from people in the crowd, and I thought that was insane. That’s some high-level musicianship to be able to just do any song that someone yells out from your entire catalog. That’s crazy.
It must be an inspiration to you as well, to reach that level some day.
Yeah, that’s some pretty extreme dedication (laughs).
Striker links: website | facebook | twitter | instagram
Striker North American tour dates with Onslaught and Artillery:
10/23: Brooklyn, NY @ Saint Vitus
10/24: Cambridge, MA @ Middle East
10/25: Long Branch, NJ @ The Brighton Bar
10/26: Peterborough, NH @ La Mia Casa
10/28: Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s
10/29: Indianapolis, IN @ The Headquarters
10/30: Lakewood, OH @ The Foundry
10/31: Columbus, OH @ Al Rosa Villa
11/01: Rochester, NY @ The Bug Jar
11/02: Trenton, NJ @ Championship Bar
11/03: Springfield, VA @ Empire
11/04: Hartford, CT @ Webster Underground
11/05: Albany, NY @ Bogie’s
11/06: Quebec City, QC @ La Salle Multi
11/07: Toronto, ON @ Hard Luck
11/08: Ottawa, ON @ Mavericks
11/09: Montreal, QC @ Le Petit Campus
11/11: Kingston, ON @ Mansion
11/12: Detroit, MI @ The Token Lounge
11/13: Milwaukee, WI @ The Metal Grill
11/15: Winnipeg, MB @ Zoo Cabaret
11/16: Calgary, AB @ Palomino’s
11/17: Edmonton, AB @ The Pawn Shop
11/18: Vancouver, BC @ Red Room
11/19: Seattle, WA @ Studio Seven
11/20: Spokane, WA @ The Hop
11/21: Victoria, BC @ The V-Lounge
11/22: Portland, OR @ Tonic Lounge
11/23: San Francisco, CA @ The DNA Lounge
11/25: Mesa, AZ @ Club Red
11/26: Los Angeles, CA @ The Whiskey