Sep. 12, 2012 - Issue #882: Down On The Farm
Striker
In the span of a week and a half, Striker went from no particular gig on its radar—an album release still a few distant weeks off—to the biggest show of the band's career, opening for Metallica. Big Four, Some Kind of Monster, Napster-battling Metallica.
"We found out on Wednesday, and then we played on Friday," vocalist Dan Cleary explains. Through the radio station The Bear, Metallica's management set up a contest to win the opening slot just a week and a half before the gig. Striker was picked as the winning act, and found themselves just a few days away from taking to Rexall's massive stage.
"We think about it now like it almost didn't happen," Cleary admits. A few weeks after, It sounds like he's still processing. "We showed up to the place and finally got in and looked at the stage and were just like, 'Wow. What are we going to do with this?' And we weren't sure where they were going to set us up or anything ... I mean hopefully we will, but we'll probably never play [another] show that big. Most bands never get to play a show on a stage that big, so we figured we'd try and run around as much as we could, because it might be the only time we can run the entire Rexall ice playing field, y'know what I mean. I didn't even know how big it'd be. It was ridiculous."
Now comes the post opening-for-Metallica detox. Striker's dealing by having a CD release for its second full-length thrasher, Armed To The Teeth. Recorded down in Nashville last year with producer/studio whiz Michael Wagner—who, coincidentally, built his name working with Metallica and other rock bands (Skid Row, Dokken) back in the '80s.
"Recording with Michael Wagner gave us this ... ," Cleary pauses. "It doesn't sound like a modern metal album. It sounds more like a classic-style metal album, which is kind of cool. It gives a cool tone to the album.
"Modern metal has a lot of really click-y kick drum and stuff like that, and we kind of wanted to keep a classic metal sound to it," he adds. "because that's what we like, and the kind of music we play."
Fri, Sep 14 (8 pm)
With Untimely Demise, Gatekeeper
Pawn Shop, $15
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