Edmonton based classic metal band Striker are world wide.
After extensively touring Europe and Mexico, they come to Lethbridge to open the Electric Eye Music Festival, May 11 at the Slice.
“We recently got back from a tour of Europe on Feb. 5. We were out with (German metal band) Primal Fear and we had quite big audiences where ever we went,” enthused guitarist Tim Brown, who is excited the band, including lead vocalist Dan Cleary, drummer Adam Brown and bassist William Wallace , to have just released their new CD “Stand In The Fire” and lead single “ Too Late.”
“ It was really fun and we got to hang out with ( Primal Fear drummer) Randy Black again who played drums on our album (while their regular drummer was away),” he said.
He is pleased with the new CD , which was released Feb. 5 and almost immediately sold out the first pressing while they were on tour.
“ We had to contact our distributor to send us more, but they said they were sold out too,” he said.
“So people really like the album. They’ve given us a lot of support to keep doing what we’re doing,” he said adding there is no thematic styles or lyrical subjects on this album.
“ We had a bit of an identity crisis,” he said adding producer Fredrik Nordstrom gave them the time and space to experiment.
“ When we write music we write what we want to listen to. We all have pretty well developed musical tastes,” he said.
“We decided we just wanted to choose the best songs we had. It turned out to be three or four mini-albums. There’s the hard core thrash , super cheesy hair metal and more progressive rock, he continued.
“Basically what you hear is what we’d want to listen to while we’re in the touring van.”
He noted there is a lot of guitar on the CD, so they have been picking up special guests to help handle extra guitar harmonies and riffs while on tour including Brandon Ellis, who has been playing with Detroit melodic death metal band The Black Dahlia Murder and Order of Chaos’ John Simon Fallon while they were in Europe.
He is glad the band will be able to make it back to Southern Alberta en route to several American concert dates. He noted their tour schedule meant they had to play on the Wednesday to open the Electric Eye.
“We’ve played Coaldale a couple of times. We’re playing Portland after the Lethbridge show, so that gives us an extra day to drive,” he said.
He hopes the Lethbridge show will go well.
“ I hope it will be fun. We’ll do all of the heavy hitters,” he said.
They also played several shows in Mexico.
“ People were really excited to see us. We didn’t expect that for our first time in Mexico,” he said, getting ready for an April 15 show at the Winnipeg Metal Festival.
He said the metal music scene is healthy.
“ I always use Judas Priest as the yardstick for the health of metal when they release a new album. It was awesome when Priest was releasing albums in the early in the early 80s, then started doing more top 40 pop metal,” he said.
“ The metal scene is definitely bigger and more exciting now. It is a very healthy time for heavy metal,” he said.
He noted the first video for the new single “Too Late,” is a video of them performance as compared to previous videos which were more science fiction featuring a killer keg robot.
“We always wanted a performance video. On the first EP we created a keg robot. Hew was going to be like our Eddie (Iron Maiden’s mascot). But they are a lot of work to film and a really high cost. They were a lot of fun,” he said.
Striker play the Slice for the Electric Eye Music Festival, Wednesday, May 11 at 11:45 p.m. with the Outlaws of Ravenhurst, Lustre Creame, and the Rainbow Patrol. Admission is $20 without a Festival pass.
