*** MONTCALM exclusive interview and discography review ***

Band: MONTCALM

Genres: Punk / Rock / Hardcore / Emo / Screamo / Skramz
Related artists: The Last Forty Seconds, Ampere, Laiki's Orbit and Kindling.
Country: New Hampshire USA
Years Active: 2002-2003
Song: "I Stopped Believing in Existence"
Album: "Kodan Armada split"
Year: 2003
Label(s): Self Released / Glory Hole Records / Pretty In Pink / Throw Brick Records
This post's artist is from the January 2014 Mix. This is track #12.
You can download: the March Mix#3 right here or get the new April 2015 Mix#4 here.
For fans of: Indian Summer, Bright Calm Blue, September, Inkwell, Portraits Of Past, Navio Forge, Ampere, The Last Forty Seconds, Secret Smoker, Eyes Of Verotika, Congratulations, D'Amore, Four Hundred Years, Twelve Hour Turn, Funeral Diner, Belle Epoque, Tipping Canoe, Coma Regalia and Ken Burns aka PROPER SCREAMO.

I don't even remember how I got into MONTCALM. I'm guessing it was the 'Kodan Armada' split 7" that first garnered my attention back in 2003 or so. The band only existed for two years but wrote and released some amazing material and has ties to some very influential screamy hardcore/emo bands. The tracks from numerous releases are strewn about when you include the two cdrs for the 'Demo' and 'Tour Demo 3"'. I recently went to the Austin Blood Alliance festival in Texas and met the vocalist from MONTCALM (as he know screams for Ampere) when my friend Tony from Congratulations and I were asked to bring him to a party after the first night of the fest. That encounter was the kick in the ass I needed to remind me to pluck the MONTCALM from the thousands of bands I have lined up for this blog and move them to the front of the line. I asked him if he wanted to be interviewed for this, to which he graciously accepted. But first, let's talk about the music.

Some songs have a very Ampere feel mainly because the vocals are so similar, obviously because Steve has been in both bands, and at times there are similarities to Kodan Armada and Ken Burns. "I Stopped Believing in Existence" sounds like Ampere mixed with Tipping Canoe.but they inject some clean singing which The Pine or some early Josh Jakubowski type stuff (Neil Perry/Hot Cross) and overall is one of their most cohesive and epic songs. From the 'Demo' cdr a real killer track is "Track 02" which has repetitious earworm of a line in "So you say it's over!". From Deadseraphim split songs "3" and "1" are fantastic songs, the latter of which I especially adore as it is extremely reminiscent of early screamo such as Indian Summer, Honeywell and Joshua Fit For Battle with the thick screaming, dissonant guitars and that beautiful hovering bassline.

My favourite song appears on both the demo cdr as "Track 3" in addition to "Untitled 2" on the tour demo cdr and sounds like a looming, dangerous storm in the country during the late summer. The build is vast and so worth the wait. Anyone who has a short attention span need not listen, for this song is over 9 minutes long, and I fucking love every minute of it. The sheer epicness of it all reminds me of September, Portraits Of Past and Funeral Diner. That's pretty goddamn good company to keep.

If you've never checked this band out I would strongly recommend doing so, as I know there are tons of people who love that old emo/screamo vibe from the mid-late 1990s as well as Ampere. Grab the discography download below and click here to read the interview already mentioned above. Here is one of the 15 questions that I asked Stephen, the vocalist and guitarist of MONTCALM.

5) Can you walk us through your musical influences chronologically?

The brief run-thru for me is that I got into Screeching Weasel etc when I was super young, then Crass/Flux of Pink Indians/Conflict and the whole anarchopunk thing. I connected the dots to bands like Disrupt and Dropdead, then tangentially found Portraits of Past and realized that I could like punk/hc but also listen to pop music like Sunny Day Real Estate and Promise Ring etc. Somehow, from that I ended up hearing My Bloody Valentine and that absolutely killed me. We're probably talking, like, 1998 or 1999 at that point. Anyway, I moved to Western MA and the scene around there in 2000-2001 was, you know, bands like Orchid, Tipping Canoe.. Jerome's Dream was from just south in CT. I was around kids who loved, like, The Smiths as much as they loved grindcore. It was pretty unrestrictive; there wasn't any sort of dogma around any singular sound, and being a smallish community, the bands I was in ended up playing shows with all sorts of other bands. The noise community at that point was pretty intertwined with the DIY punk/hc world, which definitely opened things up. I don't know. I guess all of it stuck with me to some degree.

***Read the exclusive STEPHEN PIERCE INTERVIEW (Montcalm, Ampere, The Last Forty Seconds & Kindling) here***

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DISCOGRAPHY
Click )==>here<==( to download the band's complete discography in mp3 form.

2002 - Demo cdrEP
2002 - Deadseraphim split 12"LP
2002 - Tour 3"cdrEP

2003 - Kodan Armada split 7"

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(2002) MONTCALM - "Untitled 2" (from '3" Tour' cd)

(2002) MONTCALM - "2" (from 'Demo')

(2002) MONTCALM - "1" (from 'Deadseraphim' split)

(2002) MONTCALM- "3" (from 'Deadseraphim' split)

(2003) MONTCALM - "I Stopped Believing in Existence" (from 'Kodan Armada' split)

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MONTCALM out of print mp3 discography download

(download here)

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