SHRINE OF AMERICAN MARTYR

Morgan Carpenter once again tells the story of one of his many bands! Today we hear all about Shrine Of American Martyr, who were around from 1999 to 2001. You can download their demo at the end of this or even check it out on youtube first! Now...take it away Morgan!!

Shrine Of American Martyr, or The Shrine as we came to be called  was in some ways a super group at the time, starting in ‘99. Making up the band was me and Mac Ogilvie on guitar and sharing vocals, Lance Purcell (from Snot Party and Falling Out) on drums, and Scott Leighton on bass. At the time Mac and Lance had a lot of notoriety for being in The Plan, Mac had just come off of singing for influential Halifax hardcore band Equation Of State, and I was doing Useless Solution and Envision. Scott was a hermit from Truro.

The Shrine live @ The Arts Guild, Charlottetown, PEI

The band was kind of Me and Mac’s brain child.  We wanted to form a really chaotic, intense hardcore band that appealed to several factions of the hardcore/punk scene.  We combined influences from the emerging "screamo" scene - bands like Orchid, Page 99, and The Locust, and combined them with moodier stuff of the 80's like Joy Division and The Cure...though the result was all power.  Mac and I traded off lyrics creating a co-frontman dynamic, and our shows were always super chaotic, sometimes superseding the music. The hardcore trend of wearing shirts and ties while playing hadn't really exploded yet, so in the beginning this was something we did at every show.

We had set up a short Canada and east coast US tour sometime in the winter of 2000, and in turn every show got cancelled in the weeks before we left but one show in Boston, MA with Orchid. At the time, we were still all obsessing over that band, so decided to drive down to play it anyway. We rented a van and loaded all of our gear and made a 3 day trip out of it, only to arrive to the house the show was at in Boston and find out that Orchid wasn't playing. In fact, they were never even asked to play - a friend of a friend of the promoter said he'd ask them and forgot. We still got to play with Eulcid, who ended up buying all of our demos to sell on their tour.



We made the rounds around Halifax and PEI, building a reputation for our intense live shows.  We got arty and incorporated projected video into some shows, did unexpected covers (like Suck My Left One by Bikini Kill), and in our later songs played into long winded, jammier interludes, though very little of that stuff was ever documented.



With Mac and Lance doing The Plan simultaneously, Lance felt like he didn’t have the time needed to dedicate to our later, more involved stuff and decided to quit.  Not really sure where to go from there, I started playing drums in practice to keep the band active, but I couldn’t match the talent Lance brought.  We were unable to find a suitable replacement, and additionally I believe there was tension between Mac and I for creative control of the new material.  Such is the problem with having two frontmen.  We decided to call it a day, and Lance came back in to play a last show in 2001 at the TKO space.  I somehow set Gerry’s guitar amp on fire during our set.  Oops.



We recorded a four song cassette and self released it at (I believe) our first show. It was recorded by Mike Catano (of The Plan, North Of America, The Holy Shroud, Thrush Hermit, etc.) in his parents basement. Mac and I went in with no lyrical structure, and the result was amazing. The fact that it was recorded in 8 track analog made it really powerful as well.  I’m not sure how many were made.  The Shrine was a band I was really proud of what we achieved, and the demo we produced.  I’d like to see it be released on vinyl someday as I think it holds up against the test of time.

There’s never been a reunion show since our last official show on Good Friday of 2001.  I’d like to think it will happen eventually.


DOWNLOAD THEIR ONLY DEMO!!

or listen to it here:

FALLING OUT

Falling Out might be considered Halifax's first Straight Edge hardcore band....or you could argue that was the previous band featured on here, Spent. In any case, FO were short lived, only played a few shows, but still may be able to lay claim to that title. Morgan Carpenter reflects back on those simpler times, before everyone hated each other. Read on


Falling Out began on the heels on Snot Party’s existence and just prior to Envision’s birth, which would have been around 1998.  Steve and Lance from SP had decided to form a straight edge band with Nathan Doucet (from By Any Means, later Useless Solution) and Keith Porter (later Useless Solution, Led By Regret).  Steve wanted to be the frontman, Lance stuck to drums, Keith played guitar and Nathan on bass.  I (Morgan) came on as a second guitar player most likely out of convenience because the practices were happening in the same basement as the SP practices.

Falling Out live @ The Box, Cole Harbour?

Halifax was never a hotbed for the straight edge scene, but in the late 90’s, it was probably about the hottest it has ever been.  The Falling Out songs fit right into the trends in hardcore of the time, but by today’s standards are very bland and by the numbers.  The band couldn’t have existed any other time and be taken with any degree of seriousness. Even then it was marginal.

We had about a set’s worth of songs and recorded a demo with Phil Clark (from Equation Of State, AV) at the newly opened Pavilion in it’s first incarnation.  There wasn’t a huge amount of shows played, and those that were were solely in the HRM.  The most memorable for me was playing the basement show at Food-Not-Bombs-hat-girl’s house (a girl who wore a hat with a FNB patch on it, but that no one had ever seen at Food Not Bombs) in Dartmouth, which was probably the summer of ’98.

Flyer for one of the band's rare shows

Falling Out didn’t last long, and was barely a blip on Halifax’s radar.  Like most straight edge bands, inner quarrels and edge weakening eventually brought it all to an end.  Ironically, Steve and I had a falling out, and I quit the band.  The same reasons brought Snot Party to an end at the same time.  Once I was gone, Falling Out didn’t last much longer (I don’t believe there were any shows afterwards).  This was probably partially because I poached Nathan and Keith to start Useless Solution (with Gerry from Snot Party).

Shortly after Lance started Led By Regret with Keith, and eventually started The Plan.  Nathan kept doing By Any Means and started Useless Solution with Keith and I.  In addition to Useless Solution, I started Envision around the same time with Ian Hart, and quicky started other bands like Shrine Of American Martyr, Coleridge, joined Existench, etc.  Steve was playing bass with By Any Means for a short time before leaving, which I believe ended his musical tenure.

The Falling Out demo had 5 songs (I believe) and sounds okay at best.  You can hear a miss-mash of influences in there, from chugging Victory Rec stuff, to a-tonal Ebullition style minor chords - all very typical of the time.  The demo cover is terrible, even by straight edge band standards.  We covered ‘Impact’ by Chain Of Strength, which was probably the biggest crowd pleaser.

Exactly zero members of Falling Out are still straight edge today.


Now watch some videos of the band live:






DOWNLOAD THE DEMO HERE:
FALLING OUT DISCOGRAPHY (aka 6 songs)

Or just giv'r a listen here: