Local metal band kicks off headlining tour in hometown
Hometown heavy metal heroes, Mandroid Echostar, performed a sold-out show at DSTRCT as the second stop on their first headlining tour of Canada and the US. Before the show, The Ontarion spoke with Mandroid’s drummer, Matt “HK” Huber-Kidby, and guitarist, James Krul, about the band’s success online, on the road, and in the studio.
At the end of last year, you finished up a Canadian tour opening for Protest the Hero. Your current tour for the new album, Coral Throne, will mark the band’s first time touring in the US—what are your expectations and how do you think the musical landscape will differ?
James Krul: Well it’s a headlining tour, so the shows aren’t going to be as good as they were when we were supporting Protest in terms of turnout. I think it’s a really good thing for us to do, to go out on our own merits rather than just riding on Protest’s coattails, which was great and we loved it, but it’s more of a humbling experience to go when you’re the headline band and those 20 or 30 kids that showed up, at least they came to see you, which is awesome!
Matt HK: I don’t think we really have any expectations because we’ve gone to new places before and sometimes it’s been exactly what we thought it was going to be, and sometimes it has really surprised us. […] We’re kind of going in with the goal to have as much fun as we possibly can and have a good show regardless. No matter what kind of crowd you have, you have to give […] the best show you could possibly give them.
[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”…it’s more of a humbling experience to go when you’re the headline band and those 20 or 30 kids that showed up, at least they came to see you…”[/pullquote]Having formed in Guelph six years ago, now that you’ve gained more of a following and grown as a band, what is it like playing in your hometown as part of this tour?
MHK: As it stands right now, it’s the one place in the world that we can sell a venue out, which is a good feeling. We try not to play Guelph too often just because we don’t want people to get sick of us, but when we do, it’s always a party and we love it here. The city and the scene here have really fostered us and we really appreciate how much support there’s been for us here and abroad.
JK: In general, I think Guelph has one of the healthiest metal/hardcore scenes of cities this size around. Like, this is one of the only places, I think, now that put on a show on a Wednesday or Thursday night and people will go because they want to see a show. In a lot of places, if people don’t know all the bands, they’re just going to stay home. Guelph shows always seem to do pretty well.
A lot of of new bands tend to use social media to measure their success. Mandroid seems to strike a good balance between touring and producing high quality digital content. How important is it for bands to spend a lot of time touring, or is it more worthwhile to produce content for social media?
MHK: It’s a good tool, but it also kind of hurts bands a little bit too. In this day and age, any five dudes with any level of skill can make a Facebook page and, like, further saturate the market. […] It’s so easy to become a band these days, whether you’re good or not, and that makes the whole landscape of social media kind of tough to stand out in. We try to do out best with [social media] but touring is the most important thing, because it’s such a different experience. […] Hitting the road super hard and playing in front of whoever you can—and meeting people, especially—talking to people that are fans of your band and making a connection with them, that really builds more of a strong following that can stand the test of time.
JK: It’s a bit of a double-edged sword too if you want to be noticed, grow your fan base, make money, and all these nebulous ideas that people have if they want to succeed as a musician. […] It’s kind of sad because it draws the focus away from what music should really be about, which is experiencing it live and going out on the road, meeting other musicians, meeting fans, playing with your buddies in a basement somewhere […] But, you know, it is a business, and ultimately that’s the way business promotion is now, […] so it’s a necessary evil.
[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”So that’s our goal right now—to write our space opera magnum opus.”[/pullquote]Having put out two EPs and a full-length album, how have you seen your sound evolving and where is it headed for the next record?
MHK: For all of us, as our records have progressed, we learned more about each other as musicians and learned a lot from each other too. So as it goes on, we have evolved into a more cohesive sound that represents all of us. […] When we started, we didn’t really have such a good understanding of how the pop-y vocals kind of fit into a technical, metal standpoint, but as we’ve gone on, we’ve become much more accustomed to it and I think that definitely guides our sound a lot.
JK: On Coral Throne we really tried to do a better job of making stuff with vocals and make stuff more cohesive, like HK said, but we had shorter song structures and stuff like that and we tried some more pop-y song structures. I think with the next record, it’s still pretty early in pre-pro, but we’re trying to take everything we learned in doing Coral Throne and adapt that more to an epic kind of long format thing with recurring themes. It’s something we’ve always talked about doing more of. We tend to write to a concept when we write, but none of our albums, I think, have really sounded like that. They never really sounded like one big epic piece of music. So that’s our goal right now—to write our space opera magnum opus.