BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - April 2016

MODIFIED GHOST
local promoters pull out the heavy weights for inaugural festival
Let’s face the truth: Vancouver sadly has
never been a hotbed for music festivals.
While there have been success stories
like Folkfest, there have also been many failed
miseries (New Music West comes to mind).
There are some promising upstarts like Burger
Fest but for the most part, Vancouver has been
nothing but crickets when you talk of great
festivals. Enter Jason Pruder and his promotion
company Modified Ghost. In early April some
of the world’s best extreme bands will invade
five venues over four days. The line up is impressive
with the likes of Dillinger Escape Plan,
Suffocation, Intronaut, and Job For A Cowboy,
and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The fest
also features local heavyweights like Baptists,
Anciients, and more. This is the Modified Ghost
Festival of 2016, and to say the very least, it is
going to be a doozy.
Modified Ghost is Pruder’s brainchild. Pruder
has been promoting shows in Vancouver for
roughly five years and started Modified Ghost
about a year ago after his previous company
came to an end. “I got into promoting through
playing music and booking shows for bands I
was in. The first few years of playing local gigs
around town was an inspiring time for me, and
I had always aspired to be a part of awesome
shows. I was fascinated by pretty much everything
that went into putting on shows in the
different bars I was playing, and one thing just
sort of led to another,” Pruder explains. “Having
experience as a performer is definitely helpful,
and has provided different kinds of opportunities
to learn things about the music industry.
So many things go into booking, managing, and
running a live music event. Any good opportunities
to learn and gain experience are invaluable.”
Pruder pretty much hit it out of the park
with this four day shindig. It seems crazy that
Modified Ghost has only been around for a
year and yet can still reel in some of the big fish
that it has. “I’ve wanted to be a part of a music
by Heath Fenton
festival since I got into promoting. I started
talking to different artists about the idea, and I
also reached out to various mentors and peers
for their assistance in making things happen,”
says Pruder.
The fun gets started on April 7th at The
Biltmore with Misery Index, Allegaeon, Baptists,
Theories, and Acquitted; April 8th at The
Vogue Theatre with Dillinger Escape Plan, Job
For A Cowboy, Revocation, Gorod, and Bookakee;
April 9th has two shows. The first is at The
Rickshaw with Suffocation, Cattle Decapitation,
Dead Cross, Toxic Holocaust, Intronaut,
Archspire, and Scale the Summit. The second
show is at The Astoria with Powertrip, Cult
Leader, Anciients, Usnea, North, and He Whose
Ox Is Gored. April 10th has Absu, Uada, and
Graveolence also at the Astoria.
That’s right, count ‘em. Twenty six bands!
Hot damn! Festival Passes give you access to
all venues and bands. If you want to be choosy
then you can buy for individual shows as well.
There really hasn’t been anything like this in
Vancouver and for it to happen in the extreme
music scene makes it even more amazing. Nice
work, Pruder. If you are into heavy music and
are not out at this festival in one form or another
well there isn’t a lot that can be said to help
you. Just go.
Modified Ghost takes place April 7-10 at various
venues
THICK SKULL
a beautiful mistake
Sitting in a hostel in Tallum, Mexico, Kay Gallivan, the front
person of Victoria crust band Thick Skull, finds a quiet moment
to talk about her band and their upcoming release.
Relaxed in the sunshine she is taking a break from painting a
mural. In a months time when she returns from her trip it’s back
to the heavy: the seemingly never ending sheets of West coast
rain and the heavy music of her band.
“The guys from Thick Skull had asked me last year to do
vocals for them and I actually showed up to the first practice
only to apologize in person and say that I was too busy to be
in a band,” laughs Kay Gallivan about how she ended up the
band’s vocalist, “but then when I showed up they basically
handed me a microphone and were like ‘Alright, lets get to it’
and then I felt too awkward to say no and now here we are, a
year and a half later.”
Thick Skull is Hal Johnson and Jason Lee on guitar, Stephen
Michaud on bass, Jason Michaud playing drums, with Gallivan
on vocals They are releasing their first full-length album Soft
Spine on April 21st. It follows up their 2015 demo that you can
find on their bandcamp.
“It’s been a year since we first recorded and the first time we
recorded it was only a demo and we had only been together
for a couple months. So it was really just about having something
we could show promoters and be like ‘see we are a real
band and this is what we sound like.’ And also to document,
you know, [because] when you first start a band you never
know how long it’s going to last so I always feel this really
intense sense of urgency to just record anything to make a
THE SKINNY
document that you were around for a while. That was sort of
the spirit in which we recorded the last thing,” says Gallivan
about the different recording experiences. “And this time…
we knew each other a lot better, and we got to be a lot slower
with it, so that was nice.”
The lyrics on the upcoming album are blatantly personal;
they are words about hurt and anger. “For me it’s really important
to have lyrics that are really comprehensible. Or that like
seem simple. So that reading them you get an idea of what the
song is about. I think people often hide their meaning. They
shroud their meaning in obscurity [and] try to find something
to say that won’t be understandable. I like to try [to] make
it understandable,” says Gallivan about her writing process,
“there’s this quote that I heard that was ‘Art should disturb the
comfortable and comfort the disturbed’ and I really liked that.”
Gallivan wants to comfort those who don’t always feel comfortable
at punk shows. “As far as people who are disturbed
and who are comfortable within this genre of music, like, most
of the time that I’m playing heavy music shows I’m the only girl
on the bill, let alone queer person,” elaborates Gallivan. “My
main priority is that the total weirdos who go to shows that
feel really alienated and feel like they should stop going understand
it. Little teenage weirdos, I guess.”
So whether you are an alienated weirdo or a music junkie
looking for a new band to get into to, check out Thick Skull. It’s
a little different than your average crust band.
Thick Skull will be releasing their album Soft Spine on April 21st
by Alex Molten
photo: Thomas Colwell
• APRIL 2016 19