Long standing Calgary “heavy band” the Press Gang are hard to pigeonhole. They aren’t quite punk but they aren’t quite metal either. Their music is somewhere in between according to frontman and sole original member of the band , Colin McCulloch who brings his band to Inferno with Junkies Rush, April 4.
“We pretty well started in the back end of 2006 around November or December. it started off as an angry outlet that ended up growing artistically,” said The Cape Breton born McCulloch who moved back and forth between Cape Breton and Calgary, before eventually settling in Calgary to pursue a music career.
“I just lost my grandmother. She was my best friend and instead of being angry all the time and hurting people with it, I needed to channel it into something,” McCulloch related.
“I’ve been a graphic designer for all my life, so I looked at this as kind of an art project,” continued McCulloch, a graphic designer for an oil and gas publication by day, adding despite the band’s name, he is the only band member with a day job in media. They other band members work in a warehouse and as IT specialists.
He clicked with fellow Cape Bretoner, lead guitarist/ vocalist Chad Laing and Newfoundland bassist Ronnie Keats who shared Maritimes sensibilities, and after a two and a half year search search, found drummer Derek Lindzon.
“ He’s a prairie boy. He can see what we’re doing. We placed an ad and he’s the only one who could read it. We said what we were and gave them a link. But everyone else who answered it asked us who we were and what we sounded like. But Derek actually came to one of our shows to see what we were about which seems like common sense to me,” McCulloch said adding while in the midst of the drummer search, McCulloch wrote the the drum parts to make the transition easier.
“We gave him a CD with seven songs and told him to learn them and he did,” he said adding they were looking for someone to take The Press Gang as seriously as he does.
“ We didn’t want a band whore with three different bands. This had to be it. Drummers are especially bad for that. Our last guy wanted to scale back. We wanted to move forward,” he said.
“ So 10 years later and 12 band members, we’re really happy with where we are now,” he said.
They are getting ready to release “ Optimal Running Speed,” their long awaited full length album on May 9.
“ It’s a good description of where we’re at now and where we’ve been trying to get for the past 10 years,” he said.
“ I have to do the album art. I have the sketches done,” he said.
“ We recorded the last one in 2011 in a studio. We didn’t have a lot of money, so it was rushed. We decided to record this CD here. We’re all engineers now and we know what we want to sound like, so we took our time doing it,” he said.
“ We were pretty close then. We had the songs. They were a good snapshot of where we were then,” he said.
He said they will begin recording a series of videos for the songs beginning with one called “Cornerstone.”
“All the songs have a science fiction theme,” he said. I build a starship set in my garage, so we’ll film the videos there. We’re going to film from all angles so we’ll have stock footage to use. It will be like a TV show. It will be a Star Trek ripoff,” he said adding for their last video, they made muppet characters of all of the members and will have to create another one for their new drummer.
He noted this show will be the band’s first appearance in Lethbridge.
“We’ve been trying to get there for years. We’ve been to Coaldale. That’s the closest we’ve come,” he said.
“ It’s nothing out of the ordinary,” he said adding the band’s sound has more in common with ’70s British metal than’70s punk.
“ We’re very hard to categorize, so it has been difficult to book gigs,” he said adding if you are expecting a straight ahead punk show, don’t go to the Press Gang at Inferno, April 4.
However if you like ’70s British metal with maybe a touch of Celtic music and if you love Motorhead, you won’t want to miss the show, which also includes Junkies Rush.
“ Junkies Rush are a sight to behold. They’re very percussive. They have two oil barrels they have opened up and attached a kick pedal to. They’re a good band. They are very entertaining,” he said.
There is a $10 cover for the show, which begins at 9 p.m.
