Vancouver’s We Hunt Buffalo (WHB) don’t need to hide behind a wall of amps and speakers to impress an audience, and the trio band consisting of Ryan Forsythe (vocals/guitar), Brendan Simpson (bass/vocals) and Brandon Carter (drums/vocals) plan to show just that at an acoustic show at Banff’s Elk and Oarsman on Wednesday (June 17).
WHB has made a big impression over the last five years, relentlessly recording and playing with hard rock acts including Monster Truck, Chevelle and Pack A.D., and are continuing the tradition with a current tour with Toronto’s Cancer Bats.
Before the band hooks up with the Bats in Calgary, they’re going to showcase the solid melodies and lyrics that have carried the band to this point at their acoustic set in Banff.
“We started We Hunt Buffalo in 2010 and ever since then it’s been progression,” Forsythe said. “We are pretty eclectic, we draw our influences from everywhere – Kyuss was a big one and classic rock stuff like Zeppelin and King Crimson and the grunge era, Nirvana, so we draw our influences from everywhere. But when we started We Hunt Buffalo it was definitely an emphasis on the heavier and harder rock.”
The band looks at its career as a marathon and not a sprint, which has led to new connections made in the industry with each concert and studio they walk into.
“From the recording standpoint, we do like switching it up and every record or release we’ve done has been at a different studio with a different engineer and producer,” Forsythe said. “We’re really happy with our latest record that will be coming out this fall we did with Jesse Gander at Rain City Recorders. Jesse used to be involved with The Hive (studio) so that’s basically how we learned about him; when we went into The Hive to record with Tanis Gibbons on our first record – it seems every point leads to another.”
WHB shares a booking agent with Cancer Bats and, once they showed their agent their new record, it was sent over to the Cancer Bats for a stamp of approval.
“They really liked it and said to come out for the tour, and just last week we were asked to be signed with New Damage Records in Canada and that’s also Cancer Bats’ record label, so it’s kind of coming full circle,” Forsythe said.
The band recorded and mastered the new material in January, and then spent the next three months shopping it to labels.
“We’re thrilled to have been able to line up two record deals, with New Damage here in Canada, but we also signed with Fuzzorama Records out of Sweden which is going to handle the rest of the world for us,” Forsythe said. “We built this team around us and we’re really looking forward to the future now and where it’s going to take us.”
The band works closely together when coming up with new ideas, with Forsythe always striving to bring lyric and melody ideas to practice. “A lot of the songs do start on acoustic even though they’re pretty heavy and rocking at times and from there an arrangement evolves with all members throwing their two cents in,” Forsythe said.
“Even with songs we’ve recorded, we’re still changing them. We never finish writing a song – if you come see us live we may have changed it since the last point.”
There’s still a bit of a stigma that follows hard rock and metal bands for being just as wild off stage as on, but Forsythe agrees that’s not usually the case. “The nicest people I’ve met are in metal bands and that’s kind of what we pride ourselves on, being that band that’s really easy to work with, easy going, easy to get along with,” he said.
“For the size that Canada actually is, the music industry is quite small and a close knit group of people so we want to put our best foot forward for sure.
“We’ve been knocking at the door of New Damage for about two years and toured with a lot of their artists. New Damage is the sister label to Dine Alone Records and has a huge roster so we’ve played with Monster Truck, Sleepy Sun and Yukon Blonde. We were always in their peripheral, and I don’t know if they noticed but we certainly had, we’re keeping them close so let’s keep building this relationship.”
