GrimSkunk

I'm stretched out in the Indica Records offices on St-Laurent Blvd. with GrimSkunk lead guitarist Peter Edwards and vocalist/keyboardist Joe Evil. Edwards has a Les Paul slung over his lap that he's absently strumming as he speaks, and Evil's slumped back against a wall covered in concert posters spanning the last decade of Indica. There are surfboards (a great story for another time) piled in the corner. It would be hard not to feel comfortable here.

Indica - the independent label GrimSkunk started in 1997 after the infamous implosion of their previous label, Cargo, now the stuff of Montreal music folklore (though more Headless Horseman than Paul Bunyan) - has evolved into something of a powerhouse, releasing the work of over two dozen Quebec and international artists, such as Priestess, Vulgaires Machins, The Cat Empire, Tryo, the now multi-platinum Les Trois Accords and, of course, GrimSkunk.

For most of GrimSkunk - rounded out by singer/guitarist Franz Schuller, drummer Alain Vadboncoeur and newest member, former Groovy Aardvark frontman and bassist Vince Peake - it's been a 17-year, eight full-length album adventure for friends who both work and play together. "The challenge of running a successful record label and being a successful band is making the five-person relationship work over a long period of time," posits Edwards.

The proof of this relationship is Fires Under the Road, which follows the critically mixed Seventh Wave in 2002 (which I loved, incidentally) and a
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live CD/DVD in 2003. "With this album we had to do a really, really good job and we knew it," says Edwards of the pressure to stay viable.

"For the continuation of the band, we knew we had to put out something better," concurs Evil. "And then Gggarth [Richardson - Melvins, Rage Against The Machine, Rise Against] came along. He's a great producer, he understood the band and he has a great sound."

The powerful Fires Under the Road has a real, direct rock feel to it that incorporates many of the things that have worked for GrimSkunk in previous lives, like the psychedelic and prog flourishes as well as hardcore and punk instincts and sensibilities. But of all the things that Richardson did, it was the thing he didn't do that matters most: He didn't make them sound like someone or something else. And for a band like GrimSkunk, which has an undeniably Quebec, undeniably organic, undeniably, let's say, homegrown feel, that's quite a feat.

Apart from the first single, the title track Fires Under the Road, there are two songs that are already garnering attention: the deductive America Sucks and the broadly damning Vive le Québec libre. A sample lyric: "Un autre mangeux de marde, un mangeux de bines/ avec son drapeau comme un has-been/ y'aime pas les nègres, y'aime pas les blokes/ pis ben misogine... Vive le Québec libre/ les cerveaux vides/ les mains en sang/ Vives les imbéciles/ qui fuck le monde pour nos enfants."

That's some serious cojones, especially in these parts.

GrimSkunk don't necessarily agree. "I find that Vive le Québec libre kind of counterbalances America Sucks and vice versa," says Edwards.

"It's directed at the old, typical attitude," he continues. "What it comes down to is that we're against government running people's lives in terms of what they should think. For example, post 9/11 in the U.S., you're not allowed to say anything against the U.S. - it's unpatriotic. It seems that in Quebec you've got the same problematic mentality where, because of the language issue, you have to have a certain outlook."

Which recalls novelist and playwright Michel Tremblay, who in April of this year was publicly eviscerated by his nationalist peers and nearly had his sovereigntist colours revoked by the rest of the club after saying he no longer supported the arguments for Quebec independence. (He later equivocated, saying it was the poor state of the debate he found discouraging, and not the movement itself.)

"That is a perfect example, a perfect example of the mindset," states Edwards. "That's what Vive le Québec libre is attacking: the old mindset, not thinking outside of the box or for yourself."

There's an element that's going to look at Vive le Québec libre in a very surface, uncritical way and say that it's an anti-sovereigntist, anti-Quebec song. And they're not going to be happy.

"It's going to piss some people off for sure," says Evil philosophically.

You can forget about sharing a stage with Loco Locass.

"Well, we've shared stages with them before," laughs Edwards, "and it may happen again. It's freedom of speech. We've written songs exactly like these in the past, slightly more gentle versions, and this is just..."

"This is just trying to get people to think, trying to get them to have a reaction," interjects Evil. "It's just to say that things in our society aren't that great and we can improve them... It goes back to our old '80s hardcore roots, and a tradition - Jamie O'Meara (HOUR)