EXCLUSIVE: Northlane Canadian Tour Blog #1

Fast rising Australian metallers Northlane are enjoying a breakout 18 months. Beginning with last year’s impressive studio album ‘Discoveries’, the band is quickly creating a strong reputation - both locally and internationally.

Northlane are currently touring Canada with Obey the Brave, Stray from the Path and Counterparts.

Killyourstereo.com is proud to present and host an EXCLUSIVE series of tour blogs from the group, beginning with Northlane’s first entry, written courtesy of guitarist Josh Smith:

"As an Australian it feels surreal to be experiencing the reality of a dream. After so much time, emotional energy and money spent chasing our aspirations, ever since the release of Discoveries I’ve never been more satisfied with how I’m living my life. We were incredibly lucky to get to that point as a band and we almost didn’t make it. I will always remember the last tour we did before the album came out. We were broke, unsigned and sitting on an album that cost us our life savings. We’d dropped out of university degrees, been fired from our jobs, sacrificed relationships, missed important events in the lives of our families and still playing to empty rooms all around the country after 2 years of trying.

As a result, nowadays we’ve never been more grateful for every small piece of success we’ve experienced and it’s never really quite sunk in. The next big step for us is taking our band overseas and today is the day of our very first show in our first major overseas tour – Windsor, ON, Canada. Right near the US border and Detroit. I couldn’t be more excited to finally play.

We’ve been in Canada for a few days now and they have been tumultuous to say the least. I won’t go into detail but for the most part, it really sucked, bad. Taking the good with the bad though, now we’ve got a dude called Andrew from one of our favourite bands – Structures taking care of us and we are having the time of our lives. We stayed at his place and his parents were the most accommodating people I’ve ever met in my life.

Canadians are super nice in general. In fact, so nice it doesn’t seem real. The first day I was here, my debit card wouldn’t work so a lady working at the bank gave me $5 so I could get coffee. Canada rules.

This morning we went and picked up our backline from a hire place in Toronto, being the huge gear nerd I am, even though we were in a rush I had to take a short tour. I was flabbergasted by all the awesome shit they had in that place, original leslies, two 1957 JMP’s, an unbelievable amount of rare vintage amps, awesome modern stuff like Bogners, Soldanos, Mesas and the list goes on. It was just like being an oxy junkie in a drugstore.

Yesterday we went to the office for our Canadian label – Distort. They have an impressive roster of bands and the people working there all rule. They work in one of the raddest offices I’ve seen. It’s uncanny how many parallels there are with Distort and We Are Unified. The manager there – Richard gave us a bunch of vinyl, CD’s and tees. Plus he was just an awesome guy. Really look forward to catching up with them again when the tour hits Toronto later this week.

Other highlights so far have been discovering an amazing place called Burrito boys that gave me food poisoning and made me break into a Chinese restaurant so I could destroy their bathroom. And then made a victim of Starbucks too. We also went to a joint in Toronto called Sneaky Dee’s to celebrate Adrian’s 21st birthday. We were lucky enough to meet some new friends that night, and the place had some of the tastiest, most decked out nachos with the most ridiculous serving sizes I’ve ever seen. If you ever go there – order a king’s crown nacho plate. It will be the most delicious thing you ever stuff your mouth with. One other thing - HERO BURGER. Holy shit, that place was incredible. Not only was the food unbelievably legit, the place had these self service drink machines with all these whacked out flavours of soft drinks (pop) that I’d never heard of. I had Lime Fanta. It went off. Tim Horton’s rules too. Even though the coffee sucks and they don’t have soy milk so I have to drink it black, you can get breakfast and coffee for under $5. It’s crazy how many places there are to eat here.

Hopefully this show tonight will be awesome, we aren’t expecting a whole lot but we’re full of anticipation. Being in a country I never thought I’d get a chance to go to, with my best friends in the world is more than enough for me. The fact we get to see the place playing music is just a bonus. Right now I’m the happiest dude in the world!"

Fans can view the first installment of photos accompanying the tour blog in an official photo album on Killyourstereo’s Facebook page.

You can catch Northlane on tour with Parkway Drive/I Killed the Prom Queen this December, with the band also playing at Soundwave 2013.

‘Discoveries’ is available for purchase via UNFD.