Sometimes, all it takes is a little time to realize where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going. For Alexisonfire, that little time was actually a lot, spent on and off the road outside of the particular confines of this band itself. The Canadian post-hardcore band gave us a pretty definite swan song in their farewell tour documentary series, turning to their changing lives, expanding families and fruitful side projects as reasons for seeming separation, though they were never that far from one another.
That’s something proven on Otherness, their first album in 13 years. While its foundation was built during the uneasiness of the pandemic, the album is about so much more than the forced distance we all went through. All five members contributed a piece of themselves to the record but from what we’ve gathered from our conversation with singer-guitarist Dallas Green, it’s more about what the album itself contributed to them as a band, and what it hopes to contribute to their fans. They’ve never shied away from the ways in which they as individuals and as a collective have fallen into the idea of “otherness,” but with it as an album, they hope to redefine the term as a means of acceptance.
With Otherness available now, and Alexisonfire embarking on the summer leg of their 2022 North American tour (tickets available here), Green spoke with Heavy Consequence about their comeback album, the future of the band, and more.
In regard to the band releasing its first album in 13 years, why did you feel like now was the right time?
For starters, the pandemic, just stopping all of our collective lives in a way. [Co-vocalist] George [Pettit] is a firefighter as well, so he wasn’t able to not work. He was working all through the pandemic. But for the rest of us, there was nothing going on in our lives. We had stopped, everything had stopped, just like a lot of people. What we did have was this band. Wade, the other guitar player in the band, messaged us one day because he was coming back into Toronto, and said, ‘Should we jam?’ Not to get together, write songs or get together and make a record. Just literally it was something that we could do. We just started jamming because it was this beautiful thing that we still had in our lives, and we still appreciate one another’s company. That was what really started it. I think because it was such a strange time for the world but it didn’t feel like that when we started playing. We had little bits and fragments of pieces of songs on our phones from over the years of when we would rehearse for tours and stuff, and we wrote a couple of tunes, but this was just jamming, and it really just started f**king pouring out of us. We started in the Fall of 2020, and by the end of February, we had an album. We recorded it in a week. It was probably the most simply pure, creative experience that we’ve had since we were kids when we made the first record, and when we didn’t think anybody was going to listen, you know? I wish I had like a more like I wish I had a better answer for you of why, but it really just kind of happened.
