Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
This week, CORRODE is the New Music Monday highlight!
CORRODE is a new hardcore band in Victoria who hope to help the genre broaden within the scene by bringing energy and meaning to their performances and music.
The band is comprised of Dalton Kuijer on drums, Nia Al-Maliky on vocals and Kobe Wilson as well as Kallum McIntosh on guitars.
Kuijer says he had previously played in hardcore bands back in Ontario before moving to the island, and wanted to do the same here; however he didn’t know many people in the hardcore scene upon arrival.
“I didn’t know anyone in Victoria, so I just went to the punk and metal Facebook page and that’s how I found Kallum,” Kuijer told Victoria Buzz.
From there, he and McIntosh recruited Wilson from Hey Happy Coffee after noticing he was usually wearing a hardcore band t-shirt and they found a different singer to begin the band with.
The original vocalist didn’t last very long in the band, and so the remaining members decided to hold an audition of sorts in order to find someone who fit with what they wanted and Kuijer says it was no contest after they heard Al-Maliky sing.
“I always wanted to be in a modern hardcore band and so I showed up to the—we’ll call it a ‘try-out,’” laughed Al-Maliky.
“I remember, Nia was the first person that came by and none of the songs had lyrics but she wrote lyrics off the iPhone demos we had,” Kuijer added.
“Between the other people, it was no contest.”
After CORRODE had found its new vocalist in Al-Maliky, they got to work on writing and recording their four-song EP, Demonstration, which was officially released on Friday, July 19th.
For this debut recording, CORRODE wanted their songs to have lyrics that meant something and took inspiration from bands like Incendiary, who Kuijer says are very political and bring a lot of energy to their recordings and live shows.
Al-Maliky also noted that she had played in bands that didn’t inject their lyrics with substance or meaning and to her, that is much of the point of hardcore music—to act as a release of political and social frustration or anger.
On Demonstration, one example of this is the song “W.C.N.S.F.”.
“W.C.N.S.F. stands for ‘wounded child no surviving family’ and it’s about the genocide in Gaza,” Al-Maliky explained.
“I’m Middle Eastern, I’m a refugee myself so it hits close to home. I was shocked reading this article from Red Cross of how they had to create a new acronym because of the amount of children who are wounded with all of their families killed.”
She says that by writing this song, she has been able to release some of the pain she has been feeling and share that with listeners and show-goers.
“That song has several long, sustained screams from me and for a lot of those screams, they’re done in a controlled way but they are just pure emotional screams, like I’m actually grieving all the words I’m saying,” Al-Maliky continued.
Preview “W.C.N.S.F.” and the rest of Demonstration below:
To listen to Demonstration in full, check out CORRODE on Bandcamp, Spotify or Apple Music.
They say their hope for the Victoria hardcore scene is to just keep growing and have more and more people identify with the music that they and their peers are creating.
“Hardcore is a community-driven genre that is for everyone,” Kuijer said.
Currently, CORRODE doesn’t have any shows coming up in the city this summer but plans on getting back to it and even touring out to Eastern Canada soon.
Follow them on Instagram to keep up with any shows that get announced.
Related:
- New Music Monday: HOTPOT embrace Black music on new single ‘IOU (Hot Mix)’
- New Music Monday: Standard Issue Pleasure Model release song about resilience to struggle
- New Music Monday: fivefootnine release first single as they break out into Victoria scene
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
“I think it’s awesome that [CFUV] highlight up-and-coming and new musicians,” Al-Maliky said.
“It’s a great way to reach folks who aren’t necessarily in the music scene who might not listen to your band otherwise.”
She added that they are champions of the scene and are always working to foster a safe and inclusive local music scene.
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of CORRODE in the comments below.
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