BRUTAL KNIGHTS: NO SHIRT PARTY
BY MATT DIXON, FALL 2008. PHOTO BY DAVID FORCIER | CLICK HERE TO VISIT DAVID'S FLICKR

The following is my 2008 interview with Toronto old school punkers Brutal Knights. What does Brutal Knights mean to you?

It means punk doesn't have to be the same boring dog shit over and over.

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What are some of the things you try to communicate through your music? What politics and/or ethics, if any play a role in the band, the lyrics, and the way the group goes about its business?

The world is stupid, people are irritating, life is retarded, sex is weird, facials change everything, food is money, money is crazy. Might as well have a good time. FTW. We are not a political band but we are somewhat political people I guess. The business part of the band is pretty simple. We are lucky. We get asked to do a lot of stuff and we do the things we think are worth it/are going to be fun or interesting. Our business is steered around this: I fucking hate the music industry and all music journalism. Its for bullshit people and it makes running a band a fucking drag. Bunch of bag licking wimps trying to figure out who's cool. I can't stand music culture as a whole, I just wanna play guitar and go to interesting places without losing my shirt.

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Hailing from Toronto and your experiences of living there and being an active part of the community, I'm wondering what is your take on the current state of the punk rock scene in Toronto? You've also toured quite extensively including some time in Europe. How do you go about approaching a tour? Is it difficult for everyone to take two months off and put their lives on hold? What is it that drives you to tour as you do?

Toronto has a pretty cool hardcore punk scene. Lots of shows, bands, interested people. There is a whole slew of younger people making new bands and doing shows right now. Its really fun and nice to check out and be a part of it. Our local shows over the past year have been a blast. It's totally hard for the people in the band to take the amount of time we have off work and life and what not. Its almost impossible. But what the fuck? What are you gonna do? Work all the time? I'm a crane operator. I work like 50-60 hours a week. Its stupid. We have great chances to travel for next to nothing and play our punk for weirdos. We're gonna do as much as we can. Our upcoming euro tour for april 2009 is taking us to budapest, portugal, macedonia, poland, greece, norway etc etc all over mainland europe. Fuck it I wouldn't miss it for anything.

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A favourite vegan recipe:

Huge pile of mash potatoes w/ xtra salt with horrendous nutritional yeast gravy. Couch coma