Demon's Claws

Okay, everyone's gonna be slowly easing themselves over the border to Canada over the next four years (all you draft-age punks better be cultivating your French) so here's another reason to hitch up the Festiva; the DEMONS'S CLAWS are yet another Canadian band that's really good. A mush-mouther rambler leads a quasi-all-star assemblage of SCAT RAG BOOSTER-ites and CUT OFFS refugees through a stumbling-drunk murk that touches on modern punked-up blues, dunked up psych and a GUN(K) CLUB fixation that sharply indicates that this band must have a secret shrine to Jeffrey Pierce covered in candle wax in a back-woods cabin near Sault Ste. Marie. These guys are not on the meth-driven country trip (i.e.; they don't play really fast), more like homebrew cough remedies disguised as melodies here. Those seeking a goof a la SCOTS shoud look elsewhere. A glorious mess.

-Ryan Wells - Maximumrocknroll

From Montreal comes flying an irresistible bone for the mushmouth-and-rootsfuzz camp of the Billy Chidish/Dan Melchior axis (though a little more country than Childish and less Zeppelin than Melchior), with a good bit of Soledad Brothers and Bassholes chucked in for North American flavor. Best thirty-nine minutes yet this year.

-Cuss Baxter - Razorcake

Former Edmontonian get his Claw’s into Montreal scene

DEMON’S CLAW’S
W/ Skip Jensen
Fri, Dec 10
The Sharktank (10249-97 St.)
All ages

Admit it: more then once, either in view of terrible weather or cultural void, you’ve wanted to get the hell out of Edmonton. We all have, and that’s just what Jeff Clark (AKA Lester Del Ray) did a few years back–packed up his meagre belongings and bought a one way ticket to Montreal; but not to soak up the culture, oh no. He went to rock.

"I think it was a good move," he says over the phone from Victoria, where his newest band, Demon’s Claws, is preparing to head out for soundcheck. The four-piece garage rock combo is currently on a frantic (and somewhat haphazard) tour that leaves little time for rest. "I’ve met a lot of people, and there’s more opportunity there to play. People actually support us and pay for the record to be put out, and there are lots of people booking shows. I liked Edmonton too, but it seemed like there were only two people who booked shows when I was there, and there were only so many places to play. Plus, everybody had jobs; in Montreal, nobody works."

Sounds like a lifestyle choice very much in tune with Clark’s own view of things.

"I was kinda evicted from the apartment," he says a little sheepishly, "so I just took a bus ticket to Montreal and started playing when I got there. I met people and formed a band almost right away."

That was the Cut-Offs, then the latest in a series of rock ’n’ roll/garage rock units Clark had been a part of, starting with the Greasy Meat Boys here in Edmonton. The Cut Offs fell in service to the cause of rock, however, and Clark was soon back to square one. Meanwhile, another Montreal group, the Meteors, also imploded, leaving bassist Ysael Pepin and guitarist Pat Meteor with a void in their lives that only trashy guitar riffs could fill. Meteor and Pepin hooked up with Clark, they enlisted the services of multi-instrumentalist Skip Jensen on drums, and, before you could say Count Five, a new garage rock band was a-borning. They moved quick: Dead Canary Records out of Columbus, Ohio agreed to release their self titled debut on CD, while P Trash Records in Germany opted for the vinyl version. Easy and quick as pie, right? Why doesn’t everybody have a record contract? The best part for Clark is the reception that Demon’s Claw gets in La Belle Province, a far cry from what original music often solicits in small town Western Canada.

"Little French towns, they’re always fun to play, places like Chicoutimi, Grand Mere," he says wonderingly. "It’s so strange to go to these places, but the people there always get excited when you come. Like Chicoutimi, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that place: they don’t let you stop playing. You can beat your guitar at the end, not play anything, and they’re still having fun. They won’t let you leave the stage." - SEE Magazine

When it comes to considering our neighbors to the north in Canada, the picture usually painted is that of a naturally pristine, kinder, gentler nation, one devoid of gun violence and where French is used not only to describe the fries but spoken openly. And when it comes to Canadian rock, the general cadence is usually more demure than raucous, with acts like the recently defunct Unicorns even dressing in pink on stage.

So here’s the Demon’s Claws, a Montreal act seemingly antithetical to Canada’s wussy ways. Released on Columbus-based Dead Canary, the band’s self-titled debut is festooned with the kind of grit-crusted rock that’s long been fidgeted with here. Ensconcing the album with something of the busted blues and tattered punk ethos of long-gone luminaries like the Gibson Bros. (the band apparently approached Dead Canary because of its relationship with former Gibson Don Howland’s Bassholes), the four-piece wring a good deal of stomp and circumstance through a lo-fi gauze.

The album’s a bluesy bender. The band careens through a dozen doozies while vocalist Lester Del Ray rants in a mealy-mouthed feral croon. As if you needed another reason to move to Canada, the Demon’s Claws give you one.

-Stephen Slaybaugh
- Columbus Alive