Chiodos Call Toronto their First Canadian Home
Written by Alexandra Hopkinson
Photos by Lauren Ho
Date: May 6, 2008
Dressed in a tight, tailored suit, front-man Craig Owens swaggers about the stage draping his arm at his waist with all the bravado of an ageing rock-star. He stands atop a monitor on the front of the stage, up-lit by the red floods; arms outstretched, grinning hellishly at the crowd beneath. With his floppy blonde hair, Owens looks like a post-hardcore anti-Christ.

“This song is about love, but not in a hippy way,” he says, rolling the words around his mouth lazily. He asks the crowd to slow-dance. “None of that crazy mosh, I hate my parent’s shit!”

In their new single, Lexington, Bradley Bell begins with a minor-laced piano intro. The teenaged crowd changes from a roar of emo-style screaming to a unified swirl of high voices attempting to compete with Owens’s own virtuoso.

Owens’s minions behind, who look like college-age emo and Indy kids, leap about and head-bang in the typical supporting manor, somewhat dwarfed by Owens camp-devilish presence. This is an apt reflection on their latest album Bone Palace Ballet: slightly absurd, somewhat awkward, but nevertheless original.

Chiodos are a six piece emo/hardcore band from Michigan known for poetic song titles, heavy use of the keyboard and a distinctive virtuoso singing style. They were playing April 25 to a packed house at Toronto’s Sound Academy, with Protest the Hero and From First to Last as part of the Mick Shea is My Baby’s Daddy Tour.

Before the show, bassist Matt Goddard and guitarist Pat McManaman, who appear so animated in their online ‘webisodes’ and podcasts, are subdued, most likely a by-product of touring fatigue. Perhaps, it may be the liquor which Goddard has confessed to be the band’s way for maintaining sanity during the two years of touring. “You have to keep the booze flowing freely and keep everyone loose," he says.

Goddard isn’t weighed down by being away from his Michigan home even in spite of being cooped up on tour with 15 people. He quotes Eric Clapton: “‘when you’re at home you want to be on the road and when you’re on the road you want to be at home’. Some days I feel like ‘Man I fucking love life!’ and some days I’m like so tired and then I’ll just go crawl into my bed for a few days.”

Their recent album, Bone Palace Ballet, took six weeks in the studio to complete but the final product is consistent with previous albums since they did not want to depart from their existing body of work but, rather to expand upon it.

Bone Palace Ballet takes its name from a collection of Chuck Bukowski poems. Their crazy taste in song titles, including, “If I Cut My Hair, Hawaii Will Sink” to “Bulls Make Money, Pigs Get Slaughtered.” The full title of their recent single, Lexington (Joey Pea-Pot with a Monkey Face), derives from McManaman’s dog name.

“First his name was Joey, and he peed all over the place, and he had a monkey face. Nothing too complicated,” explains McManaman.

The video for Lexington has been met with heavy criticism on the Chiodos online forums. The Tim Burton style short-film depicts the band playing lackadaisically in barren gothic woodland surrounded by candles before Owens caresses the face of the bride, with half a skull painted on her face, who then ascends to heaven.

“I’ve never given a fuck!” says Goddard, un-phased. “Whatever, we’re still doing our thing”

They’re excited to play at the Toronto venue tonight and say that they consider the city to their first Canadian home, since it is here that they have played most frequently. “Last time we came here on tour it was like one of our favourite shows of the whole tour,” says Goddard. “We’ve played here so many times. We live like three-and-a-half-hours-drive-away so Toronto is like our first Canadian home. (Canadian fans) are great! They’re a good crowd to rock out to and have fun with, interact with and have a good time.”

Crowd-interaction, they agree, is what they’re all about, and they attribute their success to a high degree of interaction with their fan base. “We have meet and greets every day,” he says. “We like to take care of our fans because if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t be here. We put ourselves out there more than other bands do.” They add that whilst they enjoyed touring with Linkin Park they felt strange about the wide gap that separated them from their audience at arena venues, and about the temperature onstage. “It was cold! Really cold! It’s freezing,” says Goddard. “I like didn’t sweat at all the whole show. I’d walk of stage completely dry. When you do headlining shows you’re up there for like an hour you walk of all wet.”

Chiodos ends the interview telling fans to prepare themselves for the fall.