Drinking deep from what front man and founder Josh refers Ramsay joke on the cup rock Marianas Trench delivers guitar anthems that to kick loud and hard. Soaring in and around the guitar / bass / drum fury are four highly trained singers with the ability to break into a cappella flights of harmony. The result: A new blend of cheeky and innocent, yearning melody and over-the-top rock dynamics.
Fix Me, Marianas Coming Soon Music documents ornamental water basin 604-full-length debut, a hugely ambitious Vancouver quartet that has relentlessly writing, fine-tuning and implementation since the turn of the decade. We are ready to take over the world, and save the universe from evil, Ramsay says only half jokingly. We are persistent little bastards. We want to 250 shows per year. We eat Kraft Dinner every night. We are willing to do whatever it takes.
The albums 11 songs cram in more hooks and ideas than the pop medium can typically absorb. The Dave Genn (MGB, 54.40) produced sound is raw and alive, marked by Ramsays wounded howl, the rhythm section lockstep surge and one flaming guitar riff after another. What the tightly arranged tag-team vocals, theyre the real deal, free from any post-production tweaking and a highlight of the live show.
Mariana Trench comes honestly by its hybrid rock / vocal sound Coming Soon Music. There was never a point where I thought, ‘Okay, we consider this together with the said Ramsay. I grew up amidst a crazy amount of music. Most people are influenced by their favorites, and I just happen from radically different sides of the spectrum.
Ramsay’s father, Miles, once Little Mountain Sound, Vancouver is one of the studio that in its 1980s prime hosted Aerosmith, Bon Jovi and AC / DC. (I can remember walking around me, guys like Steven Tyler and Tommy Lee, but I was a little young to say, Tyler, Dude, that an angry voice.) His mother, Corlynn Hanney, is a vocal teacher whose career was of two selected years touring and recording with Leonard Cohen. My parents had the Beach Boys and everything else, a lot of singing. Eventually I discovered Green Day, Foo Fighters, shit. But I never lost interest in all of the cool vocal bands like Jellyfish.
Ramsay broke his first solo gig at a coffeehouse at 14. Seated beside him in the high school band was Matt Webb turned on, a multi-instrumentalist, the guitar when he joined Marianas Trench in 2001. Both were also tenors in the school choir. Back home, Ramsay was learning to engineer his own songs, building teenage symphonies with the same 16-track Neve console Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance had used to write Kids Want to Rock and Summer of 69th
Over the years Ramsay has reigned in his hyperactive creative imagination. The learning curve was mastered with input from a number of manufacturers. John Webster (Tom Cochrane) treated early demos. And if Marianas Trench was signed to 604, Warne Livesey (Matthew Good Band, Midnight Oil), Brad McGivern (Bif Naked, Lillix) and the Nickelback combo of Chad Kroeger and Joey Moi helped refine the material further.
It was Dave Genn, however, who got the call to co-produce Fix Me with the band. Genn was awesome, says Webb of the Vancouver-based musician and producer. Ive respected and looked up and saw this guy for a variety of reasons. And he just came in and did his magic.
Live, Ramsay and Webb trade leads guitar while the rhythm section of Ian Casselman and Mike Ayley holds on the sound front. The gig is youve got to be able to play, says Webb, but youve got to sing. For a lark during concerts, theyve been known a cappella versions of Good Vibrations and Billy Joels And So It Goes Coming Soon Music croon.
Cocky and confident in the knowledge that Marianas Trench has arrived at this point was extremely difficult, Ramsay says the band wants to break fast from the starting blocks once Fix Me hits the street. We have to wait very long for this moment, and we intend to bust our balls happen to them. What can I say, 100 million fans can not be wrong.