PREMIERE: Dive into Canyon’s Progressively Rock Single ‘Keep Me Waiting’

Melbourne alternative/punk act Canyon are storming into our lives with their brand new single ‘Keep Me Waiting’ this week, and I’m super intrigued with the vast array of musical influences the band have conjured up here. Featuring a blend of grunge metal and punk styles as neat as your fave whiskey, the track is about waking up in a toxic environment and progressing towards a better version of ourselves.

We caught up with Canyon to get to know a little more about these guys and what exactly inspires the music that they make. Guess what? Genre means shit to them—they’re more in tune with creating interesting rock melodies, which has definitely worked for them so far.

Hey guys, stoked to meet ya! First up, tell us the story of Canyon so far?

Hey! Well, like a lot of bands we started off as mates who met over work, had similar music interests and taste in music. When we finally got around to jamming after saying “hey, we should jam” for ages. I think it was pretty clear to all three of us at that first jam that we had good musical chemistry and we really liked what we heard. That was one jam before the end of 2016.

Over the next three years, we kept jamming and writing. Played our live debut at The Old Bar in Melbourne in August last year and we were talking to a producer (Nic Pallet from Home Brewed Studios) as well at the time. We had such a great reception during that first live performance and it really motivated us to go record an EP with Nic. He had just finished recording with Dune Eater and worked with DR. Colossus too. We went in the next weekend to record five songs with him and went as deep as we could getting everything sounding as good as we could. We had the recording mastered by Forrester Savell who has worked with tonnes of great artists (Karnivool, Cog, Shihad and I Am Giant to name a few). 

Your new single is ‘Keep Me Waiting’ and it’s an intriguing blend of alt/rock that kinda reminds me of Three Days Grace and Rise Against. Can you tell us a little more behind the song itself? 

Thanks! Those are both great bands with awesome sounds! ‘Keep Me Waiting’ was one track that I took to the guys to see if they’d be into that kind of style and we ended up honing our sound as a trio on that one too. It was the second song we really wrote together and we are really keen to see how people digest it. It’s about feeling suffocated in an environment that prevents you from progressing in any positive way, waking up to this fact and moving towards something better. 

This is the follow up to your debut single, ‘Insane’. How’s the response been so far to your stuff?

It’s been really positive! We had some really cool reviews, did an interview as well and had some radio play overseas too! People seemed to like the sound we have. It’s really fun and exciting to be putting our music out there. 

Who are you inspired by when it comes to creating the music that you make?

We each listen to a lot of different music but…  A Perfect Circle, COG, Shihad, Rage Against The Machine, The Ocean Collective, Karnivool, Mastodon, Porcupine Tree, TOOL, Alice in Chains, Kyuss, System of A Down, Metallica, Incubus, Leprous, Muse, Soundgarden, RHCP, Tesseract, Meshuggah… those are some of the bands we love.

We are inspired by playing together and just how we are feeling to be honest, about everything. There is so much going on all around all of us and we send each other snippets of music and conceptual ideas all the time, then try to piece it together when we meet up and jam. Sometimes one of us will arrive with a more fleshed out song idea too. We are just enjoying writing music really.

What in your opinion makes your band stand out? 

I think we are in a fun time now where genres are becoming a lot less relevant. This is perfect for us because we are keen to lean into quite a few different styles while still being a heavy trio at our core. So for instance, some people hear us as punky, like yourself, while others say we are stoner, grunge or metal. We also have a strong focus on melody and song writing, we hope it’s an interesting blend!

It’s definitely a cool blend you’ve got going on! Launching a new band in this current world climate can’t be easy. What’s been getting you through COVID this year?

We have tried to roll with it really, it hasn’t been easy though. Focusing on the social media and things we can do like planning, art, more ideas for music, recording at home and a band meet/video call weekly has been fairly helpful. It’s been hard to not be able to play though!

And what’s your goal for the year ahead?

Finish releasing all the songs and EP. Then support them with some cool shows we hope! 

Anything else you’d like to share with us?

We have an animated video in the works with Small Robot Studio that we are looking forward to showing people and we are also starting pre-production for our next set of songs for EP II. Thanks for reading and listening and feel free to chat with us on our social media, we are pretty friendly, promise!

Interview by Tamara May (@citylightsTAM)

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