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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Cory McCallum of OLDE

Posted in Questionnaire on November 4th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

Cory McCallum of OLDE

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Cory McCallum of OLDE

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I’d like to think that I’m a creator. Of course, that implies a lot of things (musician, artist, writer, etc.), however it is the combination or culmination of those various things (along with drive, perseverance, the willful ignorance of “the way things are”) that allow for the creation of something new. Calling myself an entertainer wouldn’t be wrong; I like to think that the target audience, no matter how small or niche, is actually entertained by the things I’m involved with, but that part is subsequent to the creation aspect anyway.

I came about being a creator through punk rock. A handful of skate kids in a nowheresville town in semi-rural Ontario, Canada, deciding that we wanted to make music that no one in town was making. Start playing shows, start making albums. Get down to Toronto and start opening up for the touring bands that we loved (and were going to see anyway).

For Olde, specifically, guitarist/producer Greg Dawson tapped me in by announcing his vision of writing and recording some doom, some slow and low metal, after being inspired by a recording session with Sons of Otis (and eventual Olde) drummer Ryan Aubin. Greg wanted the band to be made up of people he enjoyed hanging out with, so that, regardless of content or output, the time would be well-spent and enjoyable (and so it has been).

Describe your first musical memory.

My first memory of music would be listening to Charley Pride records in my living room with my mom. My first exposure to live music (aside from church choirs) would be my dad playing harmonica around the house.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

There’s been a lot of different highlights with different bands over the years.

A fun one was when OLDE was invited to play a studio session at the National Post (a Canadian national newspaper that was developing online content at the time; it’s on YouTube). We played a few songs, at typical OLDE volume, and were pleased to hear that the producers got noise complaints from four floors in each direction AND there were rumours that the sonic onslaught was some sort of terrorist attack on the newspaper’s offices. That was pretty unique.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

I’ve had to quit bands before that were populated with people I dearly love because my life (both “real” life and my artistic life) was moving in a different direction at the time. I can’t even say now whether those decisions were the right ones, but they felt necessary at the time. I feel, as a creator, if you aren’t 100% “into” what you are doing, you need to take a step back and assess whether your time and efforts are being used most effectively. And if it ends up they are not, maybe you need to move on, even if it hurts.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Well, I suppose it could and SHOULD lead to the place that the artist is hoping to reach. However, that place itself isn’t a static destination, or, in my opinion, it shouldn’t be. The album I dreamed of making when I started at the age of 17….well, I’d like to think that I’ve well-surpassed what I thought then were unsurpassable goals. However, my targets simultaneously have become more specific and more vague, which might confuse the audience. Heaven knows it confuses me at times. On a project to project basis, I have a new goal each and every time I set out, a new sound I want to capture or a new story I want to tell or a new area I want to explore. At the same time, in the grand scheme of my entire artistic story arc, that’s where things get kind of vague. I feel that every new creation for me should be a challenge, an unveiling of something unknown about myself as a creator, a gift to the audience or a listener that should hold some sort of new and revelatory element and there isn’t any guarantee that they will actually understand it or even enjoy it. I’m not a contrarian; I truly hope that the intended audience DOES enjoy the art. That does not mean I don’t want to challenge them (and their perception of that band or group and the accepted parameters of that “scene”) at the same time.

How do you define success?

Being able to look back at a song, an album, a band’s tenure or a career in music (to speak specifically of music, but this speaks to my opinion of all artistic endeavours) and being able to comfortably and thoroughly say “THAT captured the moment. THAT said and did what I wanted it to.” To be able to make something and feel that no one else could have made it that way at that time. To have offered the world something that would literally NOT EXIST had it not been for you and your friends making it yourselves.

People “liking” it; that never sucks, and some good reviews and a bit of walking-around-money never hurt, but those things are gravy to me. The self-satisfaction aspect is much more essential.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

I’ve watched incredible artists (and good friends) literally ruin themselves trying to figure it all out. I’ve had friends eventually (and literally) die in squalor never having gotten to a place where they could balance their dreams with the world. I’ve watched as friends have made themselves miserable and sick not being able to embrace the fact that shitty art can make a lot of money and great art can make you poor. It’s a tough lesson to learn, but if you don’t learn it, the road, then, is even more horrendous than it is is when can just forget all the lies and trappings of success or money or fame and simply serve the art.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

As an artist, I’m constantly obsessed with making something that doesn’t exist yet…I mean, literally, like the style ITSELF doesn’t even exist yet. I’d love to create something that literally stops people in their tracks and has them saying “What the fuck IS this?”. I’ve had moments, certain albums, certain songs, certain comic books or performances, where I feel I’ve TOUCHED the hem of that, where I’ve challenged myself and my audience and briefly gotten to a new place….but I’ve only visited. It’s a somewhat scary place; I’m not even sure I WANT to live there.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

That answer is so personal to each creator and to each member of every artistic audience. But for me, it’s engagement. Were you ENGAGED by the song/the record? Did it draw you in? Were you able to be IN the moment and the ONLY thing happening in the world were those sounds, those words, those pictures on the cover. The world is moving at breakneck speed; the fact that people have to PRACTICE mindfulness (myself included) is regrettable. For me, that is where the arts are essential as an escape from all of that relentless hullabaloo. A great book or story or song or painting should be able to blur out everything on the periphery and allow you to be able to access a series of feelings within yourself that are inaccessible without the art. As a creator, if you can give the world some of THOSE keys to unlock those spaces within people, you are performing an invaluable service (value definable here by so many different metrics).

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

I’ve recently co-released a fictional podcast that I had a blast creating (The Boringville Chronicles) and that I truly believe has few peers (that may not be such a good thing!). It is wild and wacky and crazy and challenging and deep and shallow and, really, it’s going to have a hard time finding a home. However, Friendly Rich (one of the art-world’s hardest-working weirdos) and I sincerely believe that there is a weirdo out there looking for this one exact thing. If we have created ONE WEIRDO’s favourite podcast, we will be happy. So, I’m excited to see if Boringville finds some friends in that way.

I’m also looking forward to watching my kids (13 and almost 11) become themselves. It has been fascinating to watch them develop into real people with beliefs and loves and dislikes and styles and personalities not simply based on what is in or around the house. I don’t love it all (gah…some of the music….and the kids’ movies….), but studying how they like it, why they like it, seeing what it does for them and to them, and then reflecting on MY life and my formative years and thinking about my parents….it’s quite a fucking trip.

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Olde, Pilgrimage (2021)

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Olde Premiere “Medico Della Peste” from Pilgrimage Out March 19

Posted in audiObelisk on February 16th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

olde

Toronto noisebringers Olde will issue their new album, Pilgrimage, on March 19 through Sludgelord Records in Europe and Seeing Red Records everywhere else. One does not have to wonder long where they might’ve found inspiration for the theme of the album’s second single, “Medico Della Peste,” with its story of plague doctors of old. The band, quoted below talking about the track, are right when they talk about things like blending hard rock and heavy metal influences, newschool and old, and so on, but in making it strictly binary they undersell some of the variety of influence in that track and the surrounding seven on the eight-song/42-minute long-player. Sure, there’s a definite foundation in noise rock and sludge, but the opening title-track has lumber enough to remind immediately that drummer Ryan Aubin also features in Sons of Otis, and on the subsequent “A New King,” vocalist Doug McLarty manages to channel modern metal gutturalism in a pattern that most reminds of mid-period Neurosis. Does it make sense? Not on paper, but definitely in the songs.

So there’s more reach going on here than just hard rock and heavy metal, but kudos to Olde on the humility. The guitar tones of Greg Dawson and Chris Hughes and Cory McCallum‘s bass go a decidedly different route, backing McLarty‘s hard-wrought assertions with a duly fervent chug. Humble it ain’t, but who honestly has time for such things by their third album? Olde have developed their sound across 2014’s I (review here) and 2017’s Temple (review here), and even as they bring in Nichol S. Robertson and Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain — the latter of whom is in Voivod and is one of the happiest headbangers you’ll ever see on stage; he is a joy to watch — for guest guitar solos and branch outward with a bit of sax in side B opener “The Dead Hand,” Olde sound like a band come into their own. As “In Defiance” picks up from “Medico Della Peste,” and really across all of Pilgrimage, the progression feels utterly natural. To wit, the rumbling, righteously nodding “In Defiance,” the aggression and heftolde pilgrimage of which is seamlessly offset by a post-rock-style airy guitar lead line that courses throughout. A break makes the heavy return all the heavier, and the wash conjured at the finish underscores how much more depth there is to Olde circa 2019/2020 — when the album was recorded — than they’re necessarily letting on.

All the better. “The Dead Hand” picks up after the consuming end of “In Defiance,” and has a back-to-bruiser-business vibe… until the sax shows up. It’s a slow roller, but bordering on catchy, and the brass solo in the second half leads directly into the likewise brash finish. It’s from there that the shortest inclusion, “Depth Charge” (3:47), picks up and pushes further into the reaches of lurching riffs, bringing echoing vocals into the chasm of its own making and casting a hypnosis through repetition. Another solo — I’m sorry, I’m not sure by whom — rips into the low end torrent, and the six-minute “Under Threatening Skies” starts quiet in emerging from all that rumble, but soon enough is underway with a Goatsnaker of a riff and somehow even more aggro vocals. A current of melody comes in near the finish, I think from the guitar, but the vibe is suitably dark in a way that gives the impression the title came in response to the music itself, and much as “Depth Charge” pushed further from “The Dead Hand,” so too does closer “Wastelands” seem to answer “Under Threatening Skies,” sonically if not through direct narrative.

Part of this flow is tempo-based, part of it comes from consistent tonality, etc., but Olde make it feel purposeful just the same, and they carry the record to its finish with a sureness and an ending of brief residual hum that leaves nothing left unsaid. And so they do. To their credit, Olde never come out and note directly the pandemic that may have driven them toward some of themes for their third full-length, including “Medico Della Peste,” but that specter isn’t far off from the listener’s consciousness just the same, and even if the recording was begun in the grand before-times — when shows happened and hugs were exchanged willy-nilly between individuals hardly more than casually acquainted — Pilgrimage is suited to the post-apocalyptic context in which it arrives. “Wasteland” might as well be a story about venues closing. It may be a dark future, but there’s some bash-head-against-wall catharsis happening here.

But hey, looking for an outlet that won’t leave bruises? Shout along with McLarty to “Medico Della Peste” on the player premiering the track below.

And enjoy:

Olde on “Medico Della Peste”:

“Medico Della Peste tells the tale of the plague doctors of centuries long past. The Bubonic Plague ravaged Europe, killing millions, and it was the ill-equipped and under-funded Medico Della Peste who were charged with trying to stem the tide of the Black Death. A story as old as time; a race between science and nature to save humanity. Musically, we wanted to marry our sludge influences with the hard rock riffs we grew up with i.e. Judas Priest, Kiss, etc. Science vs. Nature. New School vs. The Old Guard. Medico Della Peste is a toe-tapping neck-snapper, crafted to appeal to fans of hard rock and heavy metal alike.”

Pre-Order Links:
Seeing Red Records (N. America / Rest of World): https://seeingredrecords.limitedrun.com/products/690900?preview=true
Sludgelord (Europe): https://sludgelordrecords.bandcamp.com/album/pilgrimage

Recorded, Produced, Mixed & Mastered in ‘19/20 @ BWC Studios by: Greg Dawson

Olde is:
Greg Dawson | Guitars
Chris Hughes | Guitars
Doug McLarty | Vocals
Ryan Aubin | Drums (and two fiery guitar solos)
Cory McCallum | Bass

Guest musicians:
Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain (Voivod) | Guitar
Nichol S. Robertson | Guitar
Nick Teehan | Saxophone

Olde on Thee Facebooks

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Olde on Bandcamp

Seeing Red Records on Thee Facebooks

Seeing Red Records on Bandcamp

Seeing Red Records website

Sludgelord Records on Bandcamp

Sludgelord Records on Thee Facebooks

Sludgelord Records on Instagram

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