Interview

Interview With City of Fire Bassist Byron Stroud

In March 2008, four musicians got together for a one-night show, to recall a few musical memories from times past at club in Vancouver, B.C.

The band was Caustic Thought, and the show was a reunion through songs of an earlier decade.

No one expected what would happen next.

They wrote a few songs, laid 'em down in a couple studios in their hometown, and mixed and mastered them. They built the MySpace page, added their friends and released the album online and hoped someone was listening. Seems like just another group of independent artists proactively using the technology and resources that are so readily available these days, waiting for a band with a little business sense to take advantage.

But these aren't any ordinary musicians.

Fronted by vocalist Burton C. Bell, best known for his work in Fear Factory, and rounded out by former bandmate Byron Stroud – who also plays bass for Canadian metal juggernauts Zimmers Hole and Strapping Young Lad – guitarists Terry “Sho” Murray (Shocore) and Ian White, and drummer Bob Wagner (Econoline Crush), the group, now a five-piece, brings experience and a whole new sound to the cyber-table.

Although plans are in the works to release their 11-track debut on CD, which was released online Aug. 15, the band is content with the current state of their digital tunes and simply enjoying the project in every aspect, according to Stroud, especially in the sense that it's been a long time in the making.

Stroud, Wagner and White are all original members of Caustic Thought, and brought Murray in specifically to fill in the second guitar slot for their reunion show. But the group clicked, and Stroud was spending a lot of time at home in Vancouver, so they decided to keep jamming and see what happened.

“We started writing some new songs and once we did that I realized it was stuff I knew Burt would be into, because we have similar tastes, we decided to have him come out and sing on the demos.”

But don't expect a repeat of Caustic Thought. City of Fire may have spawned from its ashes, but its anything but, incorporating a sonic blend of metal, punk, rock and many things experimental.

“It grew into its own thing. I mean, there are a couple of riffs on there, but that's pretty much it. It's funny because we joke now that back then we knew what we wanted to write, which was music similar to this, but we were never good enough players to pull it off,” Stroud laughs. “So now, 10 years later, or more, we're all a lot better players, we've all been out and toured the world and came back together and wrote some killer music.”

There's even plans to tour in the near future, but with all the players involved in other projects, it's a question of timing.

“We all have other things going on, and it can be tough at times, but as long as you're in control of what you're doing you can make things work. For many years I was doing Strapping Young Lad and Fear Factory at the same time, so I would just book tours when the other band wasn't touring. My wife hates it, but I come off the road and two days later head back out, or leave the same day to head back out for another tour while the rest of the guys get to stay home for six weeks, and I'm on the road with another band.”

On top of all that touring, Stroud co-owns ShoStroud Productions with Murray, a music production and management firm, and the company that will eventually release the album, so we are ever grateful to Stroud for taking the time to answer a few questions about City of Fire's self-titled debut.

Pamela Porosky: The album was recorded at Factory Studios and Profile Sound, both in Vancouver. What can you tell us about them?

Byron Stroud: There were a lot of classic records made at Factory because it's in the Little Mountain Sound Building, and all the bands from the '80s did their records there, in Vancouver, all the big bands, so it was really cool to record there. And Profile is a nice little studio that Terry is co-owner of, which is one of the reasons we went there.

Porosky: So both were kind of no brainers to record at then?

Stroud: Yeah, it just worked well for us, especially with Terry in the band and being co-producer, working on equipment that he's familiar with.

Porosky: What made Terry a good choice to produce, aside from convenience and the fact that he's good?

Stroud: The stuff that he's done with a lot of local bands around here, they sound good. He understands and he works well. Even when we did the demos, the way he worked with Burt and the kind of singing he got out of him, we'd never heard that from Burt before, which was killer.

Porosky: Did you record different things at each studio?

Stroud: We pretty much did all the drums bass and guitars and most of the vocals were done at Factory, and then anything we missed out on, like backing vocals and little guitar leads, were done at Profile.

Porosky: All the band members have a lot of recording experience. How did this help the process?

Stroud: It helped this time just by experience. Things ran on time and it was really easy because we knew exactly what to do. A lot of times that can hurt the band because there's “too many chefs in the kitchen,” but it wasn't like that. It just went really smooth and we had fun doing it.

Porosky: Why the subtle online release?

Stroud: It's on my own label with Terry and we have a couple of business partners here in Vancouver, and we just wanted to do things a little differently than the standard record company release where you build up a whole bunch of hype over a few months and then put it out there. We thought the majority of people were going to get it online, so let's just put it out there, do some interviews, do some touring and just try to build it slowly.

Porosky: For the people who haven't heard it yet, they're going to see the names Fear Factory and Strapping and Econoline and assume certain things. In your opinion, what can listeners really expect from City of Fire?

Stroud: Just a good sounding rock record that takes you multiple places. It's got lots of build to it, it's got some heavier songs, it's got groove-oriented songs, and it's got some slow trippy songs, so I think it's a good musical journey.

Porosky: When are you taking it on the road?

Stroud: We have some plans to do some stuff in November. We're going to do some shows around western Canada at the end of October, and then we're going to go to the UK, and that's all we have planned so far. But we want to tour this band, so as we start doing some showcases and people start seeing us there will be more tours to come.

Porosky: I’m curious about ShoStroud Productions… did you and Terry initially form this company specifically to promote and release City of Fire?

Stroud: I'd dabbled in record companies in the past, but never really had the connections and names to do it, and this time it just seemed right. We were thinking about who we were going to have put out this record and we thought, “Well, let's do it ourselves.” We have the financial backing and we had enough connections from over the years. It started out just as City of Fire and now it has kind of grown and we're looking at signing bands. We've got a studio and we've got a lot of things going on, so it's kind of snowballing, just like the band is.