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: Ben Chapman-Smith, Cameron Legge & Adam Young of Slowpoke

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

We play kickass, original stomping heavy music. We got there by absorbing a lot of music, practicing and writing and editing.

Describe your first musical memory.

Ben: Attending music class in kindergarten / elementary school.

Cam: Dancing around the house to my Dad’s cassettes while strumming a toy guitar.

Adam: I remember my dad had an acoustic guitar and I wanted so badly to be able to play it, but I couldn’t. That was the beginning of my infatuation with music.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Ben: This might not be the favourite but it’s near the top. When this girl in high school gave me Appetite for Destruction for the first time. I was immediately obsessed with GNR

Cam: The first punk show that I seen in my hometown of Marystown. Made me realize what I want to do with my life.

Adam: Writing music with my really good friends.

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

Ben: When I left Toronto to pursue music as a career in St. John’s. It tested my belief in whether or not I could actually accomplish this.

Cam:

Adam:

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Ben: The shorter answer is artistic competency. I guess it depends on how fast you are progressing and what’s driving you. It can be incredibly liberating but can also force you into inhospitable territory. It depends on how you define artistic progression.

Cam: It really depends on what progression is referring to. In a true artistic sense, I think it’s being able to capture human experiences and emotions and putting them into a digestible context that people can relate to. I think the best artists have a way of tapping into us emotionally on a universal level.

Adam: Inward.

How do you define success?

Ben: For me, musically, success is a cross-section of financial sustainability and contributing interesting and genuine ideas.

Cam: Contributing something that didn’t exist before, while sustaining yourself financially.

Adam: Being happy doing what you’re doing.

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

Ben: I once seen a guy taking a dump in a New York subway.

Cam: A coked out guy tried to get in my car while I was parked in a parking garage.

Adam: I saw some pretty awful animal abuse when I was young.

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

Ben: A performance art/free form improvised doom metal odyssey inspired by traditional function of music in a ceremonial context.

Cam: I have always had an interest in film. I would love to be able to totally go out of my comfort zone and attempt to write a script for a horror film.

Adam: I’m with Ben.

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

Ben: To genuinely offer a perspective or to share a specific feeling.

Cam: “To disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed” – Cesar A Cruz.

Adam: To hold a mirror up to ourselves.

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

Ben: Getting a new car, no real plans for it but I’m looking forward to it.

Cam: Figuring out the chaos that is my 20s.

Adam: Does building my recording studio count?

https://www.slowpokeband.com/music
https://www.facebook.com/slowpoketheband/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4rTzZYhVbVE03MUgsgyLKg
https://www.slowpokenl.bandcamp.com/

Slowpoke, Slowpoke (2021)

Canadian sludge-rocking/sometimes-grinding/sometimes-doomed oddballs Slowpoke will release their self-titled debut album on Aug. 22. It is a gleefully troublemaking record almost from its very start, with the 9:27 opener and longest track (immediate points) “Stony Iommi,” which launches rough with thrashy slams and a raw grind like Repulsion in sludge tones before at around two and a half minutes in it sneaks its way into a hypnotic psychedelic jam. Seriously, you almost don’t even realize it’s happened until a couple minutes after the fact, like, “Wait, weren’t these guys just ripping out my larynx? What happened to that?” and they’re jamming along peacefully going, “Nah man, not us. Those were three other dudes. Check out this massive-ass prog-stoner buildup we’re about to do, it’s pretty rad.” And so it is.

The proceedings get even more off-kilter with the three-minute shortest track, “Slumlord,” which follows and sounds like Chris Goss fronting a group of punk fuzz misfits before random growls are thrown in again; subtle preface to the sludgy slowdown to come near the finish, which is a fitting lead-in to the brash early going of “Sid the Cat,” which almost comes across like a parody of Down before the cleaner-style of vocals returns — then is layered in ahead of, you guessed it, more metallic growls. Bassist Ben Chapman-Smith would seem to be something of a tour de force in his approach, and the band, with Cameron Legge on guitar and Adam Young drumming, very much follows suit, elbowing back and forth between thrash, heavy rock, sludge, doom, grind, and noise. They make a highlight of the fuzzy centerpiece “Miami Camo,” which follows a linear forward course even as its melody offers a grounded-feeling earworm, but as they’ve shown multiple times throughout already — as they showed before “Stony Iommi” was halfway done, in fact — they’re not interested in staying in one place for two long. “Windtalker” shifts between cleaner singing and growling atop a relatively straightforward heavy rock progression, giving a sense of structure and arrangement that effectively brings the group’s multifaceted approach together toward a single purpose and still finds room to layer in a solo ahead of its final growls an instrumental finish.

Clearly these guys hare having a blast and I don’t think anyone would accuse them on this debut of taking themselves too seriously, but the ease with which they bring together more extreme forms of metal and heavy rock isn’t to be discounted. They do it in the correct way: by doing it. It’s not a ceremony. There isn’t a stop and then everybody quickly retunes and starts playing Morbid Angel riffs. It becomes part of the self-titled’s personality, part of the band’s personality, and as they move into the closing duo of “Sanctuary” and the eponymous “Slowpoke,” the former over seven minutes and the latter a bookend with “Stone Iommi” that passes nine, there’s an added feeling of breadth that speaks to where they might go in the future — not to mention the harmonies that surface in the midsection of “Slowpoke” ahead of its mega-lumbering conclusion. They must’ve had a time picking between that and “Stony Iommi” to open the record, but they ultimately went the right way. That sense of good-time levity and Slowpoke‘s being ready and willing to go wherever the hell they want at a moment’s notice (or none at all) are laid forth early and help define and give context to everything that comes after. They make it make sense, even if the sense it’s making is its own kind.

And on a first release, “its own kind of sense” is an all the more impressive making. There’s work to be done in terms of harnessing their approach and using it to build character in the songs — “Sid the Cat” does that well in terms of writing around an actual character, but I’m talking more about character for the band, so “Slumlord,” “Windtalker” and “Slowpoke” might be better examples — tightening their craft and finding their studio sound as a band only can over multiple recordings, but to call the early returns on Slowpoke anything less than encouraging would be underselling them. Slowpoke serve as a reminder of how much fun it can be when a band stands out from the crowd, and how much potential there is for them to continue to tread their own path through heavy going forward.

“Windtalker” premieres below, followed by PR wire info.

Please enjoy:

Slowpoke, “Windtalker” track premiere

Slowpoke formed in St John’s Newfoundland Canada in 2018 by Ben Chapman-Smith (Bass, Vocals) and Cameron Legge (Guitar). In early 2019 Adam Young (Drums) joined the band. The trio went on to record the bedrock of their upcoming album ‘Slowpoke” and closed the night at Still Heavy’s Midsummer Mayhem 3 festival. COVID-19 made live performances a non-option in 2020 so Slowpoke went inside and worked away at their release, and applied for a MusicNL Artist development grant which they received in January 2021.

Upon receiving the grant Slowpoke enlisted the services of Rick Hollet at Redhouse Recording (sHeavy, Hey Rosetta!) for Mixing and Chris Keffer at Magnetic North (The Black Keys, Cheap Trick) studios for Mastering. Slowpoke is currently performing Newfoundland and has an album release show planned at the Rockhouse in St Johns on August 21st 2021 with The Birchmen and local legends sHeavy.

Slowpoke is:
Cameron Legge – Guitar
Ben Chapman-Smith – Bass, vocals
Adam Young – Drums

Slowpoke website

Slowpoke on Facebook

Slowpoke on YouTube

Slowpoke on Bandcamp

Okay, you got me. I started out wanting to write about Newfoundland’s Slowpoke because the opener and longest track (immediate points) from their upcoming self-titled, self-released debut album is called “Stony Iommi” and that rules. But then I actually listened to the track, which effortlessly shifts from grindcore sludge to psychedelic jamming before giving way to the punk-via-desert hook of “Slumlord” and the leaves-bruises “Sid the Cat,” and well, by then you’re pretty much hooked. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been listening to a lot of records in the last couple weeks — 110 reviews’ll do that — and I hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt accordingly when I tell you that I haven’t heard anything in that entire process that sounds like this.

Plus, they earned a grant! Can you imagine the US government giving out grants to heavy bands? Me neither.

From the PR wire:

Canadian Stoner/Doom Act Slowpoke Announce Debut LP, Release Album Teaser

Slowpoke’s self-titled debut runs the gamut of heavy genres. It features epic, psychedelic passages that transition to fast punk rock, righteous riffs, fuzzladen doom and some straight up rock and roll. Slowpoke keeps things interesting with progressive songwriting and by drawing from a wide range of inspiration including bands like Clutch, The Melvins, Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, Black Sabbath and many more.

Slowpoke formed in St John’s Newfoundland Canada in 2018 by Ben Chapman-Smith (Bass, Vocals) and Cameron Legge (Guitar). In early 2019 Adam Young (Drums) joined the band. The trio went on to record the bedrock of their upcoming album ‘Slowpoke” and closed the night at Still Heavy’s Midsummer Mayhem 3 festival and were dubbed the “hidden gem of the evening” by Tony Carew owner of Still heavy. COVID-19 made live performances a non-option in 2020 so Slowpoke went inside and worked away at their release, and applied for a MusicNL Artist development grant which they received in January 2021.

Upon receiving the grant Slowpoke enlisted the services of Rick Hollet at Redhouse Recording (sHeavy, Hey Rosetta!) for Mixing and Chris Keffer at Magnetic North (The Black Keys, Cheap Trick) studios for Mastering. Slowpoke is currently performing Newfoundland and has an album release show planned at the Rockhouse in St Johns on August 21st 2021 with The Birchmen and local legends sHeavy.

Tracklisting:
1. Stony Iommi 9:27
2. Slumlord 3:03
3. Sid the Cat 5:31
4. Miami Camo 5:24
5. Windtalker 5:02
6. Sanctuary 7:28
7. Slowpoken 9:12

Slowpoke is:
Cameron Legge – Guitar
Ben Chapman-Smith – Bass, vocals
Adam Young – Drums

https://www.slowpokeband.com/music
https://www.facebook.com/slowpoketheband/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4rTzZYhVbVE03MUgsgyLKg
https://www.slowpokenl.bandcamp.com/

Slowpoke, Slowpoke album teaser