Interview with Michael Burton [Mercenaries]

I got a chance to ask Michael Burton [Mercenaries] a few questions about his band, past tour, and whats in store for the Georgetown Metalcore outfit. Take a look!

TRBP: Mercenaries just did a tour with other local bands Terror Spells and Heartless. How was the tour?
MB: The tour was a lot of fun! It really wasn’t too much of an intense tour as I think we were only on the road for like a week or so. We circled around Ontario and met a bunch of new people. It was the first time we’ve really missioned to Northern Ontario and I think next time we want to go to the east coast and see what’s over in those parts. Terror Spells and Heartless are both really great bands, and all of them as people are really amazing. If anyone is looking for two great live bands you should really spend the ten bucks and go out and see them live. I had some serious problems getting to sleep on that mini-tour, so my recollection of all the events are really, really fuzzy. I drank too much, and popped my knee out in North Bay. That wasn’t fun. However I had a bunch of sweet straight edge dudes taking care of me the entire trip.

TRBP: This past year you guys have really taken off, how long has Mercenaries been in the works?
MB: Well thanks! We’ve been a band for a little over a year. I’m pretty sure we had our one year anniversary this past March. It’s been really wicked so far, and I’m really happy that we’ve been able to play so many shows and do all the things we’ve been able to do. I guess we’ve “taken off” but things have been going smoothly considering we haven’t been a band for that long. We’ve all known each other long before we’re a band. I was in my first band with shepp when I was 16, and have known him since the 2nd grade. I’ve known Jay our drummer since elementary school, and I met Kris while going to local shows in Georgetown while I was in high school.

We’re friends before we’re a band, and I think that’s really important. I know some bands that don’t jam or hang out together as people, and just pull their shit together right before they tour or record. We’re a bit different in the fact that we’ll all go out for wings together or just sit around and watch tv as friends. We’re friend you know? We’re normal dudes that watch spiderman cartoons and talk about awesome things like hockey and movies.

We haven’t had any member changes and it’s been well over a year, so for the mixture of people, I think we got it down. We all get really pissed off at each other, but we tend to let it all slide and forgive each other. We’re a family, and even family members can yell at each other without breaking up, right?

TRBP: Definitely one of the most recognizable sounds in the GTA, what inspired you guys to create such a unique sound for yourselves?
MB: Well we really appreciate that compliment! We really didn’t have a clear direction of where we wanted our sound to go until we released Darkman and Hannibal, in my own opinion. Our Ep that we never pressed called “Don’t Worry About It” was incredibly rushed and written in like two weeks. Then as we wrote we kind of figured out what we wanted our music to sound like. We enjoy a lot of different music. Not just metal, not just hardcore. I can’t speak for the rest of the band, but I personally listen to a lot of pop music and top 40 dance and electronic. That’s sort of the kick I’m on right now. Grab somebody sexy, tell em hey? Right?

For me – I am all about the live show. When we write I contribute the odd idea here or there, but it’s really the rest of the band writing the instrumentals. I’m inspired by bands that just throw out all the rules of a live show. Bands that play on the floor, bands that have throngs of kids losing their minds singing along and bands that go crazy when they play live. I love that stuff so much. Off the top of my head I really think of the Chariot as the band that has inspired me, but there are many others.

As for the rest of the band they’ve probably been inspired by bands like Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza, Norris, and a whole ton of random metal, rock, hardcore and emo bands. Shepp has a pretty unique guitar tone, and I find his fast fingers really contributes to the overall sound of the band. Jay has really stepped up and done some amazing work on the ol’ drums, and Kris has been equally awesome slappin’ da bass. We all have our own tastes in music, and our own personal influences.

But the Dillinger Escape Plan has been coming up a lot lately as something we can all really enjoy listening to as well.
Dillinger is a good mix of amazing musicianship and crazy live performances. I could go on, but there are just so many bands and performers that have influenced us.

TRBP: We had a chance to review your EP, do you guys have anything new in the works?
MB: We sure do. I’ve been shitting myself lately because we’ve been writing so much. We go into the studio at the end of August to record our first full length record. We’re actually going to press this record, and it will be the first piece of music from us that you can hold in your hands, and slide into your music collection. It’s going to be 11 songs, and much different than that first EP we recorded a while back.

The new material that we’ve been writing is incredibly fast, and just plain dirty. It’s supposed to be wicked fast, and incredibly heavy. I’m really focusing on writing songs that have meaning, because if you read into the lyrics of our first EP, well, they are kind of terrible. These songs will be better, more angry and much more crisp. In my opinion, I want the record to just induce pure chaos at shows. I want massive pile ups and crazy sing a longs. I want Kris to be able to stage dive off of monitors onto a mass of stoked kids, and I want kids tackling shepp and doing metal fingers because they are so stoked.

We want a record that we are proud to play, and everyone really enjoys. That’s about it!

TRBP: What does the future hold for Mercenaries?
MB: Well who knows. We put on the brakes for the summer since we set out the goal to release our first full length record. We want to get that record out of the way, and never ever write ever again.

Ok, well maybe that’s a stretch. I want to be able to hand someone a full length record, a physical copy of music, and let them interpret the music on their own. I also want to get back to playing lots of shows, and supporting bigger bands on their adventures. A record deal would be really cool from Distort, and a tour supporting some bands that we really like would also be amazing.

But yeah, we have no idea where we are going, but we’re just going to keep going.

Cheers!