We Hunt Buffalo

Vancouver is noted for its wealth of heavy music, and We Hunt Buffalo are one of the heaviest of the bunch. Right at home on a mixtape next to Bison B.C. and Anciients, this power trio is so heavy, they can get blood from a stone. Or, at least, that's the name of their new EP. Blood From a Stone is due to be self-released on October 1.

Giving us a taste of the EP early, We Hunt Buffalo have premiered the title track. It hits hard early and often, with a fuzz-bomb riff that would make Tom Morello proud, while Ryan Forsythe's Ozzy-like vocals reach to the great beyond. Indeed, this is a headbanger's paradise.

- Exclaim!

Seeds competition names Top 3 acts

By Francois Marchand, Vancouver Sun July 14, 2012 Three bands made it one step closer to winning top honours in this year's Fox Vancouver Seeds music competition Friday night.

Stoner rockers We Hunt Buffalo, psychedelia-laced Fields of Green and '80s-influenced rock band Static in the Stars, all from Vancouver, were named the Top 3 acts in the contest applications that has launched the careers of Nick-elback, Bif Naked and Matt Good, among others. The three bands will now go on to play the Seeds launch party at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver in September.

The top act, as voted by a jury of music industry experts will receive a prize pack that includes a five-date opening slot touring with Juno-winning Canadian alt-rockers Arkells, $10,000 in equipment from Long & McQuade, the recording of a new EP with famed Vancouver producer Garth Richardson (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine), as well as tour and distribution support.

The three winners in the contest organized by Vancouver rock radio 99.3 The Fox were selected based on online fan voting and live performances judged by a panel of music industry experts.

"99.3 The Fox is extremely proud of our three winners of Fox Vancouver Seeds 2012," senior program director Chris "Dunner" Duncombe said in an emailed statement. "It has been the best year of B.C. talent we have seen yet and would like to thank all of the 300-plus bands that entered [the com-petition] this year."


- The Vancouver Sun

Seeds competition names Top 3 acts

By Francois Marchand, Vancouver Sun July 14, 2012 Three bands made it one step closer to winning top honours in this year's Fox Vancouver Seeds music competition Friday night.

Stoner rockers We Hunt Buffalo, psychedelia-laced Fields of Green and '80s-influenced rock band Static in the Stars, all from Vancouver, were named the Top 3 acts in the contest applications that has launched the careers of Nick-elback, Bif Naked and Matt Good, among others. The three bands will now go on to play the Seeds launch party at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver in September.

The top act, as voted by a jury of music industry experts will receive a prize pack that includes a five-date opening slot touring with Juno-winning Canadian alt-rockers Arkells, $10,000 in equipment from Long & McQuade, the recording of a new EP with famed Vancouver producer Garth Richardson (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine), as well as tour and distribution support.

The three winners in the contest organized by Vancouver rock radio 99.3 The Fox were selected based on online fan voting and live performances judged by a panel of music industry experts.

"99.3 The Fox is extremely proud of our three winners of Fox Vancouver Seeds 2012," senior program director Chris "Dunner" Duncombe said in an emailed statement. "It has been the best year of B.C. talent we have seen yet and would like to thank all of the 300-plus bands that entered [the com-petition] this year."


- The Vancouver Sun

For the impatient fans of local stoner-rock trio We Hunt Buffalo, the band’s anticipated full-length LP seemed like it took centuries to reach us.

The threesome — made up of singer-guitarist Ryan Forsythe, bassist Brendan Simpson and drummer Brandon Carter — released its debut self-titled EP in 2010, and immediately we wanted more of the grimy, overdriven and rhythmic music that WHB brought to the scene. So, when the band’s LP was finished in late 2011, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on a shiny piece of vinyl.

Unfortunately, the pressing took even longer than the album and we tried to settle for buying the record on iTunes.

“This is the first time we pressed vinyl and we honestly didn’t do our research to see what the turnaround would be,” Forsythe admits. “It ended up being two-and-a-half months from when the order was put in.”

Luckily, however, the gents are a generous bunch and decided to give away their digital album for free.

“It’s a new wave of thinking, music should be free,” says Forsythe, “especially if its digital. And you recoup when people come to your shows and build your fan-base and people buy your merchandise. Right now, you can download our album for free because we think we should just get it out there.”

On top of pleasing their eager fans with the notion of giving their music away to anyone who wants to hear it, the boys have landed instrumental tune, “The Hitchhiker”, in a “fuzzomentary” about one of their favourite bands, Truckfighters.

We Hunt Buffalo’s zeal for sharing music will also see the boys putting out some more material in 2012, this time on a split 7" record with local troupe, If We Are Machines. “It’s a fun idea,” he says of the upcoming split album. “That’s another thing that bands should do more—get together to do a split 7” on vinyl. It’s a good way for both bands to back each other.” - Beatroute

The guys in We Hunt Buffalo have conflicting opinions about seeds.

The grimy, stoner-rock three-piece hailing from Fort Langley—made up of guitarist-vocalist Ryan Forsythe, bassist Brendan Simpson, and drummer Brandon Carter—got its start in the CFOX Vancouver Seeds competition under its former band name, Yesterday’s Forgotten.

“And it certainly is forgotten,” Carter jokes, recalling yesteryears of writing radio-friendly tunes for the competition responsible for making the Matthew Good Band famous. Along with his bandmates, he’s hanging with the Georgia Straight at the Surrey’s Central City Brewing Co. pub.

We Hunt Buffalo, which made the list of 20 finalists in the competition in 2010, recalls the experience with a certain ambivalence.

“That was a real big eye-opener for us of commercial radio in Vancouver,” Forsythe says. “We didn’t like it one bit. We just made the conscious decision that this wasn’t what we wanted to do—we had to change the sound up, because our heart was kind of in heavier, more impactful music, whereas we were kind of just putting our foot in the water with it before.”

Not exactly content to colour inside the lines of radio-rock music, the band—which now adheres to a heavier, fuzzed-out, and psychedelic style of rock—felt a little put off by the whole process of the voter-influenced competition.

“I don’t like the whole ‘vote for our band’ kind of thing. If they came and said ‘We’d really like to play your music,’ that’d be awesome. Whatever it takes for more people to like our music,” Carter says. “Maybe if it didn’t have anything to do with bugging your friends to vote for you.”

“Yeah, if it happens naturally,” adds Forsythe. “The whole Seeds thing is just such a weird scene. We’ll leave them nameless, but we know of bands who create multiple email accounts and ways to get around the system. If they were to change the process of how it works, it would be a little more desirable, maybe.”

Since then, We Hunt Buffalo purports it has mostly strayed away from competing in contests and is, instead, hoping to gain publicity through its social-media savvy and by releasing digital singles for free. The trio’s departure from radio-friendly formatted songs to its heavier stuff, funnily enough, started with a different kind of seed. An inspiring—and very legal—trip on hallucinogenic seeds gave way to We Hunt Buffalo’s fuzz-heavy “Strange Sensation”, the opening track on the band’s self-titled LP, which was released on vinyl in January.

“We went down [to the Urban Shaman] and he had these things called Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds, and I bought them—I paid GST on them at the time,” recalls Forsythe, stressing their legality. “We brought them home, and I had done a bit of research on them beforehand and learned that they contained LSA—a sister compound to LSD.”

Carter pipes up to say he didn’t partake in the Woodrose seeds—instead, he was ripped on a handful of designer drugs he’d ordered off the Internet.

“Also totally legal,” he adds.

“We headed up into the forest behind Carter’s house,” Forsythe explains. “It’s a beautiful property, just acres and acres of forest and at the top there’s this open pasture, which is an unfinished golf course. We were up there for a few hours; after three or four hours we went back to the house and were sitting in my room and then all of a sudden, all of us simultaneously looked at each other and we were like ‘Holy shit, what is going on?’ It really just hit another level.…Then we kind of hit this state where it was full-on, felt this connection to everything. It was the LSA—it is what it was—we all came out of it having a really crazy experience….So, yeah, then we wrote a song about it.”

Other songs on the 45-minute record include “Northern Desert”, a lick-heavy progressive tune with crashing drums about a scorching heat wave that nearly knocked out Simpson, who’s a road-paver by day.

“‘Northern Desert’ was written about working outside - The Georgia Straight

We Hunt Buffalo was the winning band at last week’s fourth Nimbus School of Recording Arts showcase. The band, which performed at the Media Club and was selected by Nimbus students, gets recording time at the studio. Also making an impression was Ashleigh Eymann, who likewise will record. The competing bands entered via SonicBids, which is accepting entries for the next showcase/battle of the bands, September 30. - The Province

They have alleged, since the name of their band has ruffled some feathers (or is that fur?), that what they are referring to by “Buffalo” is not the endangered majestic beast of the plains, but rock music itself, which is a majestic beast in its own right.
It is a metaphor about seeking out genuine, honest rock music in a landscape populated by superficial, commercial auto-tuned garbage, and the debut LP from these Vancouver boys is an invitation to the listener to join in on their hunting trip.

The odyssey begins with the hard-core break-down driven, “Strange Sensation,” where vocalist Ryan Forsythe wails out a story about hallucinogenic experimentation. Carrying on through meditations of self on “The Search,” an instrumental, and a King Crimson cover, the album keeps a steady pace right to the frantic shred fest of “Harry Barry” that concludes the record.
The songs on this album are all delivered in the same fuzzy stoner rock style, though the trio definitely bring their own individuality to the sound. In a genre that can get fairly muddy from being almost entirely comprised of reworked Black Sabbath songs, We Hunt Buffalo float on a lighter end of the spectrum, shying away from the doom and sludge elements that can creep into stoner rock.
Rather than focusing on the occult or science fiction, leaving listeners in a droning, baked reverberation, they write about what is around them and lean musically closer to a psychedelic jam band. The use of the saxophone especially brings up memories of early ‘70s art-rockers, Audience, and We Hunt Buffalo’s cover of King Crimson’s “Twenty First Century Schizoid Man,” which has also been covered by April Wine and Swedish death metallers Entombed, heavily features the baritone sax, branding the song with a unique sound that helps it stand out from these previous versions. At other times, they are reminiscent of more contemporary sounds, like on “Someone Other,” where the boys ride a Queens of the Stone Age vibe.
The album’s thesis statement may be “Digital Reich,” which criticises the music that they see as having endangered rock’n’roll. Though with bands like We Hunt Buffalo around, it seems rock’n'roll is just fine. - Discorder

On its eponymous debut album, We Hunt Buffalo returns with retooled versions of songs that first appeared on its self-titled EP.

The fuzz-heavy “Strange Sensation”, for instance, finds singer-guitarist Ryan Forsythe perfecting his howling over new and bluesier hooks. Elsewhere, “Northern Desert” employs vocal and guitar reverb not heard in the song’s earlier and grittier version, with drummer Brandon Carter making cascading walls of sound with crashing cymbals as bassist Brendan Simpson’s heavy lines hold it all together.

New to the album is “The Middle Son”. Clocking in at just over six minutes, it starts with a tribal, hypnotizing drumbeat and repetitive, grimy riffs that swell into a bursting, hook-laden finale.

A cover of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” features riffs and refrains that stay true to original ’70s progressive rock, but We Hunt Buffalo’s distinctive sound is reinforced by hefty, overdriven bass and synthesized guitar. Near the end of the LP, We Hunt Buffalo gets a little more experimental, as “Digital Reich” introduces a vocal growl in a song with progressive twists and turns, each element of the tune different from one moment to the next.

Capping the 45-minute record is the slow instrumental “Harry Barry”, which offers up echo-laden guitars and careful, controlled percussion with plenty of high-hat. A low-toned saxophone played by Forsythe is introduced mid-song, making for a five-minute triumph. All in all, We Hunt Buffalo’s return features the heavy, lush sound the band is known for, with additional experimental flair. - The Georgia Straight

"Bottom Line: Underneath all the force-of-nature sound that they produce (and believe me...they play at volume), WHB write ridiculously catchy hooks and hit you with grooves that entice you into the maelstrom. And live, they're tighter than an army of circus clowns in a Smart car. This is the type of band that makes me spend way too much money at the record store." - Bobby Ferris - Host of 'Barn Burner' on CITR

While many bands that align themselves with animal names might hardly deserve the title, We Hunt Buffalo’s dedication to track down and capture the dying breed of rock and roll certainly gives itself leave to be called whatever-the-hell it pleases.

The Vancouver-based three-piece seems to have caught onto the fact that every good, classic record needs at least one song dedicated to drugs, which is why its self-titled debut EP kicks off with “Strange Sensation”: a five minute homage to one-night’s trip in the desert. The track is distorted and sludgy, but maintains the clarity of a good old-fashioned rock tune with devilish licks and soulful howls.

“The Search” is the second gem on the six-song disc. It starts out with heavy drums and a catchy riff before bleeding into a melodic rhapsody that’s nearly reminiscent of the early Tragically Hip, with a vocal intonation somewhere between Gord Downie and Danzig.

Showing the music scene that, yes, once again can just a guitarist, bassist, and drummer comprise a great band, We Hunt Buffalo is resurgence of a three-piece act we’ve been ever-so-patiently waiting for since 1994.

And the group definitely has the chops to prove it’s worth its salt. “Northern Desert” and “Rain”—with slower riffs and softer percussion—showcase the musical talents that the boys really possess, and if somehow that weren’t enough, they establish it once again with instrumental ditty, “The Hitchhiker”.

In only six tracks, the guys of We Hunt Buffalo have piqued enough interest for one to ask: who the hell are these guys and where can I hear more? Well, whoever they are, they definitely slay. Buffalo, that is. - Georgia Straight

While many bands that align themselves with animal names might hardly deserve the title, We Hunt Buffalo’s dedication to track down and capture the dying breed of rock and roll certainly gives itself leave to be called whatever-the-hell it pleases.

The Vancouver-based three-piece seems to have caught onto the fact that every good, classic record needs at least one song dedicated to drugs, which is why its self-titled debut EP kicks off with “Strange Sensation”: a five minute homage to one-night’s trip in the desert. The track is distorted and sludgy, but maintains the clarity of a good old-fashioned rock tune with devilish licks and soulful howls.

“The Search” is the second gem on the six-song disc. It starts out with heavy drums and a catchy riff before bleeding into a melodic rhapsody that’s nearly reminiscent of the early Tragically Hip, with a vocal intonation somewhere between Gord Downie and Danzig.

Showing the music scene that, yes, once again can just a guitarist, bassist, and drummer comprise a great band, We Hunt Buffalo is resurgence of a three-piece act we’ve been ever-so-patiently waiting for since 1994.

And the group definitely has the chops to prove it’s worth its salt. “Northern Desert” and “Rain”—with slower riffs and softer percussion—showcase the musical talents that the boys really possess, and if somehow that weren’t enough, they establish it once again with instrumental ditty, “The Hitchhiker”.

In only six tracks, the guys of We Hunt Buffalo have piqued enough interest for one to ask: who the hell are these guys and where can I hear more? Well, whoever they are, they definitely slay. Buffalo, that is. - Georgia Straight