Conviction and passion are the driving force behind the way the awesome label A389 operates. Dom does not put out records because a certain band might be the hot shit at any given time, he releases music that he really has an affinity for, past or present. In this spirit, A389 has just released the full discography from Countdown To Oblivion, the Toronto band that featured Chris Colohan on vocals. CVLT Nation is stoked that A389 has given us the opportunity to stream the whole record for your listening pleasure. It gets even sicker: Domenic Romeo interviewed Chris Colohan about his time in Countdown To Oblivion. Check out the stream and this killer read below and after the jump!
For anyone who didn’t live in Toronto during the late 1990s, COUNTDOWN TO OBLIVION is possibly the most obscure band you’ve been in. Where/how does it rank on your personal scale of bands you’ve been in?
I don’t really think of them like that. My favorite is usually whichever one is in the present. All of them are in context of the moment they came out of and the people involved, but CTO represents a great moment and bunch of friends so it holds a lot of good memories for me.
I always liked that CTO was a mishmash of various other interesting people from awesome Toronto area bands. How did you guys decide who was going to be in this band?
A bunch of us were at a party at a friend’s place in Parkdale and the idea was brewed up, I think it was originally between Bubby and Katie but it snowballed from there. At the time, no one ever tries to assemble a “supergroup”, and you know better than most that none of our bands were a really as big deal at the time as they became later, and neither was CTO. We were just nerds from our scene that dug each other’s bands and wanted to stick one more online poker sites in the fire just for fun. Obscurity is only really relative after the fact compared to more recent bands that got around more and with more output.
Stream Countdown to Oblivion Discography
[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/01 Open Season on Hecklers (Part 3) Laso in Ireland.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/02 Spray P.E.C..mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/03 To An End.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/04 Take it Apart.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/05 Poster Children for Family Values.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/06 No Brainer.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/07 Up in Flames.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/08 The Way It Is.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/09 I’ll Do Anything.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/10 More Dead Kennedys (a.k.a. Single Bullshit Theory).mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/11 Poster Children For Family Values.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/12 Four Alarm Fire At Lockport Gambino Ford.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/13 The Way It Is.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/14 Take It Apart.mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/15 Spray P.E.C..mp3,http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/audio/16 The Fest Sex I Never Had.mp3|titles=Open Season on Hecklers (Part 3) Laso in Ireland,Spray P.E.C.,To An End,Take it Apart,Poster Children for Family Values,No Brainer,Up in Flames,The Way It Is,I’ll Do Anything,More Dead Kennedys (a.k.a. Single Bullshit Theory),Poster Children For Family Values,Four Alarm Fire At Lockport Gambino Ford,The Way It Is,Take It Apart,Spray P.E.C.,The Fest Sex I Never Had]
Countdown to Oblivion Discography TRACKLIST
1. Open Season on Hecklers (Part 3) Laso in Ireland
2. Spray P.E.C.
3. To An End
4. Take it Apart
5. Poster Children for Family Values
6. No Brainer
7. Up in Flames
8. The Way It Is
9. I’ll Do Anything
10. More Dead Kennedys (a.k.a. Single Bullshit Theory)
11. Poster Children For Family Values
12. Four Alarm Fire At Lockport Gambino Ford
13. The Way It Is
14. Take It Apart
15. Spray P.E.C.
16. The Fest Sex I Never Had
Interview Continued…
Now that the dust has settled and years have gone by, I appreciate the diversity in the band’s personnel more than ever.
Yeah, it was cool that we had such an assortment of punk and metal skids in one place.
How does your memory serve you, when thinking about everyone else’s bands at the time (The Swarm, One Blood, Teen Crud Combo, Ignorance Never Settles, Rammer, Legion)?
I remember pretty much everything, that’s one long-term benefit of straightedge. I had the One Blood tape and LP (Oh, you mean “Building A World Of Prosperity Through The Efficiency Of The Free Enterprise System”? Yep, that’s the one! Longest LP title imaginable?) and Stephe used to do a zine called Drastic Solutions. Him being a bit older than the rest of us, we all knew his undertakings for sure. But everybody was playing in these rad bands that all played and hung out together. Rammer, TCC, Holocron, LFD, and all our various bands in the few years prior would play shows. Katie’s band from back in Ottawa, Warfare State, was also great. So Stephe brought the brains to the operation, Katie brought the Slayer riffs and RJ doubled them, Bubby held it down and Jaime got pissed and threw bottles. Man – of them all, I really miss Teen Crud Combo. “Beaver County – Population: Nick”? Come on.
CTO was the first/only time you’ve been in a band with two vocalists, what was it like dividing up who does what part and how did affect the lyrical content of the songs?
Me and Stephe just both dived in and wrote the words to play off of or around each other so we could actually fit in twice the vocals as a normal song. Lyrically and opinion wise, we’re both pretty long-winded so that worked out really well that way.
It must have been cool to be in a band where everyone brings unique qualities to the table. Was the songwriting process something everyone contributed to?
We usually started with riffs or whole song ideas from Katie and went from there, adding layers to it. Katie and Bubby’s jams were the basis of most of the songs.
One thing I really enjoyed about the discography was your liner notes where you talk about that sketchy old practice space out east. When I still lived in Toronto, I was always afraid that elevator was gonna stop dead in it’s tracks and I’d be left to freeze to death. What’s the craziest thing you saw there?
Haha, that place was FUCKED. I just remember the Hostel vibes, the elevator that didn’t work, seeing my own breath, and the room with the bare swinging light bulb that you had to cross to get to the toilet. It was like jamming in an abattoir, but with more pigeon shit.
Toronto in the late 1990s vs Toronto 2012. What do you think are the biggest differences for better and for worse?
There’s a lot, both for better and worse. I always hate the idea of glorifying any one time over the present, because really as long as there’s ever been hardcore, you had the same essential elements and potential for greatness or disposability. I remember it fondly maybe because I was that much younger and things like this happened a lot more naturally and spontaneously then. For sure the kids were very different, the really young guys that went on to No Warning/FU generation were posi youth crew kids, and we were a few waves older but still all hung out and played together. Who’s Emma was still kicking and it wouldn’t be obvious for years how much that impacted the Toronto scene at the time.
I think the real kicker is how much the internet generation has changed the mental and social landscape in the last 15 years, and that goes for any scene anywhere. People have easier and free access to music and history lessons, which is a good thing on one hand – but on the other, everything skims across the top of their consciousness in a very standardized and impersonal way. I think when you had to communicate and participate physically, mail letters, wait for records, and have your differences or arguments face to face, you were invested on a far more personal level, and there was no real sense of self-consciousness about what you were doing. We grew up before the internet so we see both sides and can compare the before and after, but most kids now under 30 have grown up only knowing that, so I’m curious to see where that’s going to go in another few years. I think either it will get even more and more that way, or people will start to react against it and reinvest in the old ways. But better and worse is always up to what people make it moment to moment, it depends on the choice between complacency or going against the grain, and right now the grain is the safety and impersonality of the digital age.
Do you think CTO could have continued beyond your final record (split w/ They Live)? At what point did you guys decide to call it a day and what prompted that decision?
It was getting tough to pull off. All this was happening while I was playing in both the Swarm and Ruination and working my way through school, so for my part, it was getting hard to juggle, and it was the same for a few of us. But I think for something we did that spontaneously, that we got a lot out of it.
Did you guys leave any unfinished business in the form of songs that never got recorded?
We had a few jams left over, including We’re That Skid Band (a riff on the Crudos song) but they were never recorded and are long lost by now.
Any chances of CTO doing a reunion show in celebration of the Discography LP?
It’s tough to say. Those of us that are still involved in music would all do it, including me. Bubby and I still play, and Stephe still does Equalizing Distort. But Jaime lives in Newfoundland with kids (that’s a CTO song right there) and Katie opened a bar with Martin from Career Suicide (Thirsty & Miserable) this year, so I think she’s out of the game since Brutal Knights, and RJ still lives here somewhere but no one’s seen him since those days. But if you can get Lars, Kirk and Cliff on board, James over here is game.
Thanks for your time!
Dude, thanks to you for staying on our case about it for years and making this all finally happen.
COUNTDOWN TO OBLIVION Discography 12″/Digital
Available NOW: www.a389records.com
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