We’ve teamed up with Ontario post-hardcore heroes Alexisonfire for an exclusive color vinyl box set and individual color vinyl reissues, paired with the first-ever 80-page BrooklynVegan special edition magazine, which chronicles the band’s story from their formation through their triumphant 2022 reunion album ‘Otherness.’ Here is an excerpt from the magazine that discusses the band’s breakup, hiatus, and reformation. Pre-order the vinyl and the magazine in the BrooklynVegan store.
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When they completed the Old Crows / Young Cardinals tour cycle, Dallas told the guys he’d be leaving the band.
“If I’m not feeling it, then it’s hard for me to do something,” Dallas says. “It’s just the way I am. When my inspiration wanes, I can’t snap out of it.”
The crowds had gotten a little smaller at Alexisonfire shows on that Old Crows tour, which was weighing on Dallas, and it was getting harder and harder for Dallas to juggle Alexis and City and Colour at once. “I really started to run myself directly into the ground,” he says. “I was unhappy, and I was being torn apart by the thing I’d always wanted. I just needed to make that decision for self-preservation.”
“I knew I was jeopardizing the future of it for them,” Dallas says. “I knew that there was a chance that they might not speak to me ever again, or that it could go totally the wrong way. And, I think when I left that room, there was a moment with a couple of them where I quite possibly thought that might be it.”
“[It] was an uncomfortable decision for us at that time,” George says, “but now in hindsight looking at it, I’m like, it absolutely needed to happen.”
“If it were me, I would have probably done exactly what he did,” Jordan reflects. “I remember the conversation when we met at Joel’s office, when he told us he was gonna focus more on [City and Colour]. I think my exact thing I said to him was, ‘I fuckin’ hate it, but I obviously fucking get it.'”
Dal’s departure didn’t take effect right away, and meanwhile the band pushed forward and hit the studio to make a new EP, Dog’s Blood. With Dallas on his way out, George handled all of the lead vocals, and in many ways the EP feels like George’s baby. It’s heavier, more overtly hardcore-influenced, and the band made it with producer Jon Drew, who George had previously worked with in the studio with Fucked Up. According to Joel, Dog’s Blood foreshadowed the direction of George’s post-Alexisonfire band Dead Tired. “You can see where George really leans into when it’s just him.”
“We were experimenting at that point,” says George. “We didn’t know what the future of the band was gonna be, or what it was gonna sound like, and we were listening to wildly different genres than our contemporaries. So, I think we attempted to make something that we thought we’d like to listen to at that point. We wanted to go heavier, we wanted to go crazier.”
And that’s exactly what they did. The songs “Dog’s Blood” and “Black As Jet” are two of the heaviest songs Alexisonfire have ever written, and in a way that’s much more forceful and direct than the chaotic screamo elements of Alexis’ first record. They’re closer to metallic hardcore or crust punk, with George’s love of bands like Fucked Up and Cursed really coming through. At the same time, there’s the instrumental post-rock of “Vex” and the hard-to-pin-down “Grey,” a slow, sludgy, out-there song that George says was inspired by Nick Cave and which finds him embracing slightly more of a singing voice than usual.
Working with Jon Drew helped allow the band to try something new after doing three consecutive records with Julius, and making it at the now-defunct 6 Nassau Studio had an impact as well. “The studio itself was really, really small and had really old gear in it, like the actual recording gear and stuff, and it was just kind of a raw sounding studio,” recalls Jordan, “which lent itself perfectly to the music we were writing at the time.”
By the band’s own admission, the process was rushed, and the idea was just to go with their first instinct, record everything the way they’d written it, and not spend much time tinkering with the songs once they laid them down. It was perfect for the rawer, more experimental music they’d written, but the decision wasn’t solely a creative one. It was also a result of the band just starting to feel worn thin.
“We’re all pretty miserable in the band [at this point],” says Wade. “I think we’re kind of not really that happy playing music in a room with one another […] so we’re just kinda like, ‘Yeah that’s cool, that’s done, let’s record this, whatever, bye.’ People are staying in the studio as long as it takes them to do their part and leaving.”
“This was the end of the line, but I think we were challenging ourselves to use this outlet we have to kind of let it all out,” adds Steele. “In all honesty, the recording process was a very murky blur. For better or for worse, it was a very quick thing that was done.”
Steele had also been struggling with alcoholism and mental health issues, and by the time the band was making Dog’s Blood, those issues started to reach a breaking point. “I was physically and mentally checked right out, so I wasn’t very much part of the writing process of Dog’s Blood so much, and it was a struggle to even get it together, to have enthusiasm.”
“I didn’t really know what to think of the record,” he continues. “To even play Dog’s Blood live was a challenge for me at that time. It was the biggest disconnect.”
Even George describes the EP as “half-cooked” and says Alexisonfire “were on the fly, trying to throw something together, and [came out with] a few ideas that we hadn’t quite fleshed out yet,” but even if Dog’s Blood has some unfinished business, all of these factors–however tough on the band they were at the time–make it the special record that it is. Nothing else in Alexisonfire’s discography sounds like it, and its few songs are among the band’s best. “All of those things which sound very negative are probably all the cool, creative things about the record, that allow it to sound different from our other stuff,” says Wade. “So I think now I’m very stoked about all that stuff.” Fans were stoked too. A review on The Punk Site by Cole Faulkner called the EP “hands down the closest thing to the band’s back catalogue in years,” a review in Exclaim by Ben Conoley said it “packs a wicked punch,” and the title track especially remains one of Alexisonfire’s biggest fan favorites.
You could already sense that Alexisonfire’s interests were leaning towards something more aggressive and antagonizing when they recruited Trash Talk and La Dispute for their US tour that year, and they teamed back up with La Dispute and also brought out metalcore veterans Norma Jean for a tour of Canada after Dog’s Blood’s release. That tour led up to a hometown show at CAW Hall in St. Catharines with support from a number of the band’s close friends: Billy Talent, Cancer Bats, Moneen and Chore. It was the last show that Dallas intended to play with the band.
For Chris Steele, the pause caused by Dallas’ departure came as a relief. “That last tour was really bad,” Steele recalls. “The last show in St. Catharines, for me, was a nightmare.”
About three months after that last show, Steele checked himself into a detox, and from there he went back to rehab, which he’d also done three years earlier, but with a different outlook this time. “I went for myself,” he says. “I shut my mouth up a little bit and I listened a bit more and I did everything they told me to do.”
Steele also moved back in with his parents, putting him in a drastically different environment than when he was touring the world and drinking, and he says it wasn’t a smooth transition but it was a necessary one. “Over the course of like two years, I started to feel comfortable in my own skin. The anxiety was lifted. I started to feel healthy, I started to feel honest, started to feel transparent, telling people how it is, gaining trust in others, seeing a different person come to life.”
As Steele was recovering, Alexisonfire spent the next year trying to find a replacement for Dallas–with Dal’s blessing–but nothing felt right. Then Wade got asked to join UK hardcore band Gallows as their new lead vocalist after the departure of Frank Carter, and that was the nail in the coffin for Alexis. “It was very sad,” Wade said. “I certainly didn’t want the band to break up, but Alexis was spinning its wheels and I needed to go make some music, but yeah it was a fucking bummer. It had been everything for a long time. It was hard to put it down.”
Once the decision to officially put Alexisonfire to rest was made, the band booked one last farewell tour, with Dallas involved. For Steele, it was the first tour he had ever done sober. “I had no more fear, I had no more anxiety, I felt see-through. I could show up and feel like I’m here. The show experience was better than it ever had been. I felt connected. I [previously] thought I had to be lubricated to even go and do what we do, and that was a lie. It still is a bigger high than any of that shit. Being able to do that farewell tour gave me the acceptance that Alexisonfire was done. It was a thank you and goodbye, I got to experience it sober, the shows were great, now I’m okay to put it to rest. And at that time, that’s what I thought, I thought it was done. And I was okay with it.”
The farewell tour was with their old friends in Moneen, and it ended on December 30, 2012 at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario.
“It was one of the biggest headline shows they had played,” recalls Kenny Bridges of Moneen. “Every single person in that room was there to celebrate the boys with everything they had, the band included.”
“When they got to playing ‘Happiness by the Kilowatt,'” Kenny continues, “everyone knew that would be their last song. During the ending build before it explodes into destruction, the band all turned to each other almost like they were alone in the room. Together one last time doing what no one else can do. Being Alexis. It was beautiful. The build was perfect. So much anticipation from every single person in that room. But no one wanting the song to end. ‘Cause we knew what it meant.”
“The chaos of the ending kicked in with such beautiful destruction. Guitars, bodies, clothes and who knows what else was flying around the stage as they destroyed everything one last time. I looked around side stage and I was surrounded by so many friends and people that have been with the guys from the start. All of us crying. Just balling our eyes out. It wasn’t sad. It was beautiful. It was powerful. It was a moment I’ll always remember.”
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As Alexisonfire were making Dog’s Blood, Dallas was focused on writing the songs that became City and Colour’s Little Hell, a couple of which got their debuts during City and Colour’s 2010 US headlining tour and his UK shows that year opening for American pop singer P!nk. Little Hell came out in July of 2011, and with Dallas’ commitments to Alexis on pause, he really ramped up City and Colour’s touring that year, going all around the world and hitting major festivals like Glastonbury, Coachella, and Lollapalooza. He stayed incredibly busy over the next few years, with two more City and Colour albums and even more touring. In 2014, his friendship with P!nk resulted in a collaborative album between the two of them under the name You+Me.
Meanwhile, Wade’s band Black Lungs did some gigs and put out the ripping hardcore punk song “All Seeing Eye” on a 2011 split 7″ with Cancer Bats, and then he hit the ground running with Gallows, touring all across Europe, the UK, and North America with them and putting out two albums in three years. Jordan stayed active with Cunter and later went on to form the band Say Yes. For George, the breakup made him realize maybe it was time to leave music behind for a while.
“I was like completely numb to performance,” George recalls. “Like we played ten months out of the year, I’ve played so many shows, you don’t feel anything anymore, you know? I think we all needed to have it go away for us to recognize that it was important to us.”
With the band broken up and Dallas and Wade separately touring the world, George wasn’t sure what he would do. “You spend 12 years in a band, you’re almost useless when you come out the other side.” So he went back to school and he also trained to become a firefighter, an occupation he still holds to this day.
For Chris Steele, the combination of being sober and having a ton of time on his hands gave him the opportunity to not just leave music behind, but to leave friends, family, and home behind too. He left Ontario with nothing but a single bag, and no cell phone, and decided to travel the world. “I was still a curious guy when I was touring, like I wanted to meet people [from different places], try the food, and [see] the architecture and the geography of it all.”
Steele’s original plan was just to spend a year in South Asia, but after that came and went, he had the itch to just keep moving and seeing more and more of the world. “The longest I’d stay somewhere was maybe two weeks, but usually every three-to-five days I’d move around, and I loved it.”
“I’d be hiking in the Himalayas for weeks, and then I’d be in a small fishing village in Sri Lanka for a week, and then I’d be in a bustling city in Mumbai for a bit,” he continues. “I was always sort of changing what I was doing, and meeting other creative people–a lot of tattoo artists–along the way, being exposed to different local music… seeing festivals and parades or just a local man or woman on a corner playing some weird instrument I’d never seen in Northern Vietnam or something.”
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When Dallas was on tour with City and Colour in Australia, he met some fans at a bar who talked to him for hours about Alexisonfire, and how important Alexis’ records and live shows were to them when they were growing up. “I just had this beautiful heartwarming experience with these kids, that I emailed everybody just to be like, ‘Fuck, man, I just had the greatest conversation about the band.'”
The guys had all put Alexisonfire to rest at the end of that farewell tour, but for Joel, Alexisonfire never stopped being a concern. After they’d broken up, he got the band’s masters back at a “very inflated cost” from Distort founder Greg Below and was doing everything he could to make that money back, with new box sets, merch, trying to get the band on playlists once streaming services were popularized, and anything else he could pull off. “I wanted my band to own their fucking material,” Joel says. “We were doing everything we could to pay down the masters.”
The team at Dine Alone knew that demand for Alexisonfire had only increased since the breakup, and show offers kept coming in. That band’s own spark had been inching towards igniting after Dallas sent that email from Australia, and when City and Colour were set to headline the 2014 edition of Riot Fest Toronto, Dallas had an idea: “Why don’t you guys come and play?” he said to the band. “Like I’ll play my set, and then you guys come out for the encore and we play Alexis songs, it’ll blow everybody’s mind.”
Nobody wanted to do it.
Wade, George, and Jordan were all hesitant, and it would’ve been especially tough on Steele, who hadn’t picked up a bass in two years and who at the time was at the Southern most wi-fi point of South America before you get to Antarctica. “But it put the bug in our ear,” George says, “and we knew that maybe we’re holding our breakup a little too preciously.”
“With [Dallas] stopping to focus on City and Colour, it really felt like his time with us had come to an end, his involvement with heavier music had come to an end,” Wade adds, “so maybe the fact that he threw it out there first made us feel a little bit more open to the idea.”
The offers kept coming in for Alexisonfire to play festivals, and Joel would do his due diligence and tell the band: Heavy Montreal, Riot Fest, Reading & Leeds. The timing lined up with Steele finally feeling ready to come home.
“I got an email at this internet cafe that was like 500 degrees in Myanmar,” Steele recalls, “this email from Joel talking about doing some festivals in 2015, which was the last thing on my mind… I thought we were done, and that was fine.”
Steele says the idea of playing festivals was “a bit strange but also excited me,” and he decided to come home and try it.
“It was like, ‘Let’s just play a show and see how it feels,’ you know?,” recalls Dallas. “And if it feels right, if it doesn’t feel like we’re just doing it for a paycheck, let’s just see what it brings.”
“The second we all got in the same room to rehearse, it was like we immediately fell back into our old roles,” George says.
“I think in the end we ultimately missed each other’s company and missed that camaraderie that we all have together when we’re together,” adds Jordan.
So the band started playing festivals, first Heavy Montreal, then Reading & Leeds, then Sonic Boom in Edmonton, and their names usually appeared at or near the tops of these bills. “It helped that they were the biggest shows we’d ever played,” says George.
“We did that Montreal show, and it was beyond my wildest dreams,” recalls Steele. “The energy, the new faces, the amount of people, the way we played together. It was like another chance.”
“We did maybe six shows and they were all just immediately like, ‘Fuck, why did we stop doing this?,'” adds Wade. “The shows were bigger than they’d ever been, and the excitement around the band felt huge. It didn’t feel like some ‘Hey, remember the time?'”
On stage at Riot Fest Toronto, which the band was headlining, Wade said, “We promise to never leave you again… Alexisonfire are officially back.”
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To read more, pick up BrooklynVegan’s new 80-page Alexisonfire magazine–on its own or paired with an exclusive vinyl box set or individual exclusive vinyl reissues–in the BV shop.
