Spread the Disease

Spread the Disease was an extremely black metal influenced metalcore band, which the genre later became known as noisecore. They were fierce and unholy without being corny like most black metal acts of the 90s. This band formed out of Karenza after a vocalist switch up and a three month “no name band” change. They also briefly used “Her Severed Head” was a moniker. By the time Spread the Disease was titled in February 1998, the line up featured Ben Pobjoy on vocals, Dave Buschmeyer and Trevor Dykstra on guitars, Stu Brown on bass and Shawn Butchart on drums. The last Karenza songs were redone in STD style and were released as their first ep “This Blood Ridden Tragedy” out on Undecided Records. Not very long after that they once again teemed up with Witching Hour Records (they had worked with them as Karenza) to release a split 7″ with Song of Zarathustra. That summer they went on tour with Racebannon and were partly accompanied with Last Days of August. This tour took STD to the midwest, then to the southern states, and back up the east coast.

On their return they went in Signal 2 Noise to record their first full length “We Bleed from Many Wounds”. This would be released on Eulogy Recordings, which was already familiar with New Day Rising. In the winter of 1998 they went back on tour, this time with Confine. During 1999 they continued to play shows, but in June Stu left temporarily, and Andrew Hercules replaced him. No shows were however played with Andrew. Stu came back and they got a spot on Hellfest in July. This proved to be the break STD was waiting for. They dressed up like 80′s metal kids and when they went up on stage their vocalist yelled out “You think you’re fucking metal? Well you’re not! We’re Spread the Disease!”. And followed by blasting through their set. The rest of the day was spent avoiding the majority of attenders, and that was it. They were legends of metal. After that, everyone wanted to see them play.

“The Sheer Force of Inertia”, their second full length was once again released on Eulogy, with a 12″ vinyl version out on Good Life Recordings in Belgium. The album featured guest vocals by Ian Clarke and electronic tracks composed by Bryan Belanger, and gave the album a much more distant feeling. A few last shows were played that summer, but Trev would move to Ottawa to go to school and a lot of the pre-planned shows with Confine were cancelled. STD was on hiatus. However they did play some shows the following summer, the last one being on July 14th 2000.

Spread the Disease – Discography

Maharahj

I decided to post this band, knowing it doesn’t fit in the hardcore genre, because I think that people who liked Spread the Disease would really like this band as well. These guys were from Oakville I believe, and they were damn good.

The band formed under the name One Winged Angel. They released their first demo in 1999 and I think it was repressed by Now Or Never Records as their ep “A Replication of a Process and Product”. Anyway, this sold out quite rapidly, while they were touring with Dillinger Escape Plan. They they went to record and release their album “Chapter One: The Descent”, which was a huge success.

I read they were supposed to release a split with Circle of Dead Children on Robotic Empire, but it never got released. This may be what “The Belle Morte” ep is, but I can’t confirm. In fact I found very little information on this ep, and suspect it could be just a bootleg, since two of the songs are straight from the album (including quality) and the other is a b-side from Chapter One. If anyone could tell me some info about that… They then had their second full length, “Repetition” after a 2 member change. Everything ended not long after that.

Maharahj on Myspace
Maharahj Discography

The Separation Suicide

The Separation Suicide was formed by Gordie Ball after leaving The Fullblast in 2002. He recruited Simon Bruyn on vocals with ??? on guitar, John Ouellette on bass and Jamie Parkhill on drums. After playing a handful of shows, ??? left and the band asked Andrew Ledger to join as second guitarist. They reworked all the songs they had, and after playing some more shows, John was replaced by Adam Mansbridge. In the summer of 2003, they recorded their demo, which was burnt on CD-rs for their summer tour and retitled to “Not All Fun and Balloons”. They then released an ep on Cyclops Media, “This Conversation” in 2003. I’m pretty clueless about what else happened with the band, so feel free to throw some comments about them.

(additional information and tour ep thanks to Matt)

The Separation Suicide Myspace
The Separation Suicide Discography

The Abandoned Hearts Club

The Abandoned Hearts Club was a band that unfortunately never got to release as much as planned. The band was formed out of most members from Karenza, which evolved into Spread the Disease, and continued along the same lines as The Sheer Force of Inertia was going, continuing to lose the black metal influences as they went on, and opting for a more math-metal approach, and becoming The Abandoned Hearts Club. Nevertheless super chaotic and amazing!

TAHC released their first demo/ep “The Initial Confession of The Abandoned Hearts Club” in late 2001 themselves which featured four songs. It didn’t take very long for them to get recognized, and they went on tour with The End (which was in the hype of their debut release with Re-Define and would sign with Relapse after the tour). Needless to say, this got the band the attention they deserved, and a crowd of renowned labels approached them to collaborate.

The band played a small five song set on CIUT radio station on April 7th, 2002. The show was recorded, but only two songs from that session were ever released, on their ep “Live on CIUT 89.5″ that the band gave out with all buyers of their “Initial…” self-released ep. This was strictly limited to 20 copies. I wish I myself had one of them…

They decided to release two songs to the public digitally; “The Enthusiast”, with Aaron Wolff (of The End) on guest vocals, and “Metropolitan Sentences” with Chris Colohan (of Cursed and a load of other bands) on guest vocals. Both songs were meant to be on their upcoming album, which had been in the works already. Hydra Head Records beat everyone to it and were the first to release a song officially by the band, on their two disc compilation “Where Is My Robotic Boot?”. Not long after Robotic Empire released another exclusive song on their compilation “Mutation”, and a song from the bands ep was selected to be on The Communion Records’ compilation “Transfiguration Songs”. By this time TAHC had inked an album deal with Abacus Recordings, and were set to release their debut album “Aloha Cocksuckers” in 2004.

As if that wasn’t enough, the band was approached by Init Records to re-issue their debut ep on CD/7″ with brand new artwork, and fully remastered songs. The band was also set to be on a tribute to Chokehold compilation that Genet Records ended up never finishing up.

Sometime during the very late season of 2004, they lost their drummer, which I haven’t come across the reason why, but the band just couldn’t find a good enough replacement. So they decided to break up in February of 2005, yet they were willing to play one final show during the summer of 2005 and release the final album to coincide with that show. The final album as they had it said, was not entirely finished, but was to be comprised of 7 pre-production demos (including the two featuring guest vocalists). Neither the show nor the album ever happened. The only thing that surfaced would be songs posted on the bands myspace from the pre-production session an entire year later in 2006.

Billy Curtis is now doing Hunter, with members of Alexisonfire, and they just released two eps this year. So check it out! They are really good!

I’ve managed to track down everything listed above, so what you’re download is pretty much their discography. I hope you’ll enjoy it because it took me some work to track down this stuff. An entire intensive day of research.

The Abandoned Hearts Club Myspace
The Abandoned Hearts Club Discography