Tomb of the Worm was an obscure doomy, grind-metalcore band from Burlington, Ontario. The story begins in January or February of 1999, after Kyle Bishop was unexpectedly expelled from The Swarm aka Knee Deep in the Dead, in December of 1998...
-Part 1: Incision (Late 1992 – October 1993) Incision was a band whose reputation surely has never faded. In a way, they were the precursor to Grade. But Incision’s ideals and influences were completely different and revolved...
-The original line-up (October 1997 – September 1998) This band has connections all over the Ontario hardcore tree. Before this band even got started a lot of the members had played together in other projects. Chris Colohan, Christian...
The Separation Suicide formed in January of 2002 as a “best of” band from members of Avarice and Confine. Most members were living in the Hamilton/Oakville/Toronto area of Ontario and came together when Gordon Ball left The...
Before Kenobi started, Andrew Tweedy, Peter Read, Stephen Martin and Gunars Kazaks were in several teenager bands that made up the early years of the 90’s. Those included “Twerp”, “Mush” and “Joyjuice”...
To the Lions was probably the epitome of Ontario’s 2000 chug-core revival. They were based in Burlington and featured some all-star cast. A while after Grade broke up, Matt Jones and Shawn Magill went to a Bane show on September 11, 2004...
John Ouellette and Brendan Munn met in the summer of 1997 at an Ignorance Never Settles concert. After some talk, they decided to form a straight-edge band together and started jamming in the Munns’ basement in Hamilton, Ontario. They...
Funerary was a metalcore band from Hamilton, Ontario, active for a little under a year in 2000. In late 1999, Chris Logan quit SeventyEightDays. Prior to that, he had played in Chokehold, Burst of Silence, Prayer for a Fallen Angel, Crumble...
This compilation could have been a landmark for Canadian hardcore, emo and metalcore of the 1990’s. “Could have been” because it was never released. The fact is no one really knows how close it came to coming out. Usually...
The last line-up of Burst of Silence featured Ryan Hollingworth on vocals, Chris Ansley on guitar, Jamie McGinnis on drums and Mike Presseiary on bass. That line-up changed name to Sinsick in late 1995. Jamie and Mike ended up leaving the...
This band was pretty obscure under the radar of Canadian metalcore, although their name and members would make you think otherwise. Some of the members have been in quite important bands and I think this one is no different. Fawad Fudd Bokhari...
In This Defiance, from London, Ontario, formed in March 2005 with Ken Montville on guitar, Matt Bouchard on drums and Ben Kaye (from Clear a Path) on bass. Later that month they were joined by Steve Parkhill on second guitar, who was at the...
Jude the Obscure had a very comfortable place in the Ontario math-core/noisecore scene throughout its existence. I believe they were the first to be called “chaoticore”. Prior to the forming of this band, Grant Freifeld...
Acrid was a sludgy/doomy/grindy-metalcore band from Mississauga that was initiated by Neil Rodman on vocals, Jeff Almond on guitar and Dave Buschemeyer on drums. This was in November of 1995, right after Jeff Almond had quit Ignorance Never...
-Face Down (Spring 1993 – September 1993) Face Down was a hardcore band from Oakville, Ontario. No doubt that you will recognize the names of many of these members, as they would go on to great fame with their later musical endeavors...
Burst of Silence was formed in the later part of 1991 with Ryan Hollingworth on vocals, Zak Husted on bass, Sam Mamone on drums and Christian McMaster on guitar. They formed from different circles around the city of Hamilton, but they all went...
Formed in 1998 by Eric Neufeld, Engage started out as a 4 piece with Ben on vocals, Dave Pifco on guitar, Eric Gaudet on bass and Eric Neufeld on drums. The band played regularly with other local band Notoriety. After building a good following...
Dirge was an early to mid-90s metalcore band from Ontario, which eventually became Day of Mourning. At first they were almost what you now call nu-metal, though a lot heavier. But their later material became just like DOM. Dirge formed in 1994...
These guys were amazing! I always found they were the equivalency to Morning Again in Canada. Unfortunately they were always evolving and changing members which were slowing them down and preventing them from getting as big as they should of...
Confine formed in early 1997 as one of southern Ontario’s (Oakville) most aggressive and chaotic hardcore (without being screamo). The original line up was Rob Blakely on vocals, Neil Hamilton and Gordie Ball on guitars, Mike Earp on bass...
Tough guy metalcore was all over Quebec in the early to mid 2000s (right after that ended, our whole scene ended). The Payback is another band from that scene and genre that came from Trois-Rivière. And I wasn’t able to find much on this...
This is my introduction to Gatineau hardcore. Forsaken Trust was probably the most well known band from there, and Rich Boivin was an important part of local hardcore, putting up shows and festivals with bands from all over North...
She Kills was a metal hardcore band from Halifax, Nova Scotia that was formed in the summer of 2003 after the break up of the bands Flesh Made To Suffer and Tomorrows Demise. The band played a style of metal and hardcore that now has been...
Endless Fight was formed in 2004 in Winkler, Manitoba (later stapled as a Winnipeg band, not sure if they moved there or only because it was close to Winkler). They had a demo, which i unfortunately never heard. They then self-released their ep...
This Day Forth is my first post about Newfie hardcore. These guys were from St. John’s, and they were really good. Similar to Ignorance Never Settles (stories connect as you will read later). They formed under the name Fallen in August...
Grace Like Winter was one of Winnipeg’s best band, in my opinion. So far i keep being blown away with bands from Manitoba, (a scene which I am still not too familiar with, but seems to be very religiously inclined, not that it would...
This is my first post on a band from Manitoba. These guys were from Steinbach. And I love them! They had these incredibly melodic parts on their hardcore, something I can’t seem to pin point in any other band. The band formed in 1997 and...
I can’t find too much original information on this band. Pretty much this is what half of Ire became. This was a lot more thrash/crust oriented, and its pretty strong. They first did a cassette demo, which was re-issued by Scorched Earth...
In Dying Days were one of the few bands in Quebec doing the really metallic style of hardcore which was big in Florida. They were often compared to Poison the Well and Morning Again, but personally I would compare them to This Day Forward. They...
Searchingforchin (or sometimes Searching For Chin) was awesome!!!! And I’ve been wanting to post this band for a while. Only it took me forever to collect what I could find from them. When they started in 1999 they were a lot more...
And here it finally is. The first post about a Québec band. This band is a bit hard to classify. I’ve read people call it emo (Yannick Lorrain’s description from a 1996 review of the band, and while maybe back in 1994, 1995 the...
Ok this band is pretty new to me, but I cannot tell you how severe of an impact it had on me. This band has got to be one of the best things to ever happen to recent metalcore. Unfortunately they decided to break up in 2008, so I wont ever get...
The Zyphoid Process (sometimes stylized as The Zyphoïd Process) was probably the only band from Quebec that I truly adored. This melodic, chaotic, post-metalcore band featured members who lived in various locations of the West Island of...
Ok, there are at least half a dozen bands named “Facedown” in the hardcore genre alone. I must admit that I really like the Belgian one as well. But this one, from Canada of course, is probably the heaviest of them all. If the...
So I had to follow with a third great band (not that there is a lack of them here) so I chose the ultimate metalcore band from Ontario. At least in the 90s they were the ultimate. Day of Mourning was this supper powerful metalcore band that...
Editor’s note: This biography of Culture was written entirely by Alexandre Julien, with collaboration from the band members, throughout 2007, for the now defunct Myspace page. Culture began in 1994 with Mark Mitchell on vocals, Rich...
Editor’s note: This biography of Bird Of Ill Omen was originally written by Alexandre Julien, with collaboration from the band members, throughout 2007 for the band’s now -defunct official Myspace page. It has since been re-written...