THE HAROLD WARTOOTH Mike Mikocic [guitar]: "I wanted to make music that mixed the aggression of Nebula, the freedom of Hendrix, the weirdness of Budgie and the heaviness of Sabbath and put our own stamp on it." The Harold Wartooth is a hard rock band from Toronto, Canada. Fragments of the band have been jamming for years, but the lineup was finalized come late 2006. The 6 song album, "The Harold Wartooth EP", soon followed and to positive reviews. The band, who's 20-22, recently played with heavy rock legends Blue Cheer and can be seen regularly playing Toronto and surrounding area; a late summer 2007 tour eastbound is currently being planned. The Harold Wartooth was also featured on Henry Rollins' LA radio show and will be on Catacomb Records UK fuzz rock compilation to be released autumn 2007. The Harold Wartooth EP is available through the band on Myspace. Words | Mike & Omri Mike [guitar]: "I had been jamming with Omri Horwitz [vocals], Emon [bass] & Spencer Linton [drums] one way or another for a few years, but the right time finally came to start a band. We had an advantage by already having chemistry and knowing each other's playing style. We were all into classic heavy rock; Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, Leafhound, as well as newer groups like Queens of the Stone Age and Soundgarden. I wanted to make music that mixed the aggression of Nebula, the freedom of Hendrix, the weirdness of Budgie and the heaviness of Sabbath and put our own stamp on it. We recorded The Harold Wartooth EP over two days in a tiny studio called Sleepytown Sound in Scarborough, Ontario. They had recorded Circus, a favourite local band of ours, and we decided to do our EP with the same guys. Our band had just fully formed about 2 months previous, but the groundwork was there. The studio was two rooms; one for the band and one for the engineer. It was an old building near a Jehovah's Witness center, with no heating, but we loved the vibe. I had all the music and ideas written out because I knew we didn't have any time at all to waste and I had a clear vision of the EP. But with anything else, a lot of things happened on the fly. This was my first proper time in a studio, although I had played on some 8 track recordings and knew how you had to approach it, which is a combination of 'keep the feeling but don't fuck up!' It all happened pretty fast, but I was really pleased with how it turned out. As far as equipment goes, it's made up of great vintage copy / obscuro companies that I can't even find on the internet, so it's cool to be working with your own sound. A weird thing I remember was seeing a poster for one of our shows right in the doorway, in this little remote part of the city. We recorded it old school: all the instruments live, add overdubs, then vocals. I wanted a raw, but not too raw, sounding album. We managed to do 6 songs at 30 minutes. THE HAROLD WARTOOTH EP > Here's a little track by track info... Last Day of July Mike: "July came from a few different pieces I was working on for awhile. I had accumulated this batch of strange riffs that I knew would make up a great song. The Middle Eastern part was written on my friend's cheap acoustic guitar one drunken night; I've always liked the raga side of bands like Zeppelin and The Mars Volta. That was supposed to have vocals over it, but Omri was adamant that we keep it an instrumental section. "I remember sitting down and working out all those little fills in between each chorus line, which I rarely do. I like the music to have a spontaneity, but some parts call for it. I scrapped the jam section because I thought it was too easy, but it had such a groove that I kept coming back to it. I find it ironic that we open our CD with the song we always close live with. This is definitely the heaviest song on the EP. Actually, this was written in the early hours of August 1st to be perfectly honest..." Omri [vocals]: "Lyrically it's a tip of the hat to Soundgarden's "Big Dumb Sex" and friends Thick James and the Bitches' "Handjob Shoppe". July was written in the midst of a somewhat difficult period in my life as cliché as that might sound, and is structured to relay the frustrations and pendular motions of a love / hate relationship I was caught in. Mixing in my oft times dry sense of humor, I still consider this a favorite but at the same time I think its live performance overpowers its recording exponentially." Flight of the Bitch Mike: "This was a spur of the moment song and it became my favourite. I had these two songs I was working on forever but they just weren't going anywhere. One night I said "fuck it, I'm getting rid of these", but then I took the best parts, played them in reverse and it finally started to sound like a cool song. "Writing a song can be so frustrating sometimes, but then you'll get a flash of inspiration and you have to run with it. I tried to fit in this really spaced out bridge section but everyone hated it. I remember them laughing at it, so that was quickly omitted. Funk tends to show up in my playing in its own weird way; something I picked up from countless hours listening to Jimi. The solo was the only one I had worked out before I went into the studio. I knew this was going to be a great percussion song and our engineer ended up playing these little eggshell maracas on it." "We usually open with this; it's a good way to get a show started. The title is a take on "Flight of the Rat" by Deep Purple, which was a parody in itself. This was actually just put on Catacomb Record's UK fuzz compilation called "Sounds of the Catacombs" that's going to be released in fall 2007." Omri: "Lyrically, it has nothing to do with the title whatsoever. "Flight of the Bitch" was a pet-name we christened the song with that ultimately stuck. The song itself is about cultural diversity, mixing in philosophies and traditions of ancient civilizations and different ages of humanity tried with confusion and betrayal. But the composition itself is nothing but light-hearted, building caricatures with words like the "shoddy Brahman doing twirls on the catwalk" and "I've heard the choirs of angels screaming 'Hate!'/ we wear their feathers for headdress/ and dance around like the gorgeous." It's all in good fun. Lyrics-aside though, the vocals where very much Alice in Chains and Sabbath influenced, I think that's obvious enough to those who've heard it through. Enviorment Song Mike: "I literally wrote this song in five minutes; arrangement, drums and all. Some songs just happen like that. I had just came home from a rough situation at a girl's house, got really stoned and began to jam on this waltzy riff. Its the worst background story for a song, but hey, its the truth. I was afraid this song was too bare, but then I remembered a good song is a simple song. "That middle section is such a fuck-all jam; I love it. When I first heard the playback, I thought a horn section would go well with the chorus; but that was way out of reach at the time. Its a fun song to play. A lot of people have told me this reminds them of "Burn The Witch" by QOTSA, although that's one of the few songs of theirs I don't particularly like." Omri: "Burn the Witch is awesome. But back to the issue at hand, "Environment Song" was inspired by a certain documentary on global warming and sung in what I like to think of as the jazzy styling of the generations that spurred these problems in the first place. It's essentially an accusation against our elders, who to this day, have the audacity to criticize us for whatever the reason when they themselves fucked up so bad." Orikuula Brew Mike: "I wrote this in the middle of high school right when I was getting into Tommy Bolin, whose such an underrated musician. I still remember working this one out in my old drummers 130 degree jamspace. We were going to open the album with this, but we had a love / hate relationship with it at the time from all the rewrites. We all enjoy it now and its a pretty melodic song. "The chorus is just so heavy and pushes along. To me, this opens with the best guitar sound on the record. I had like 3 guitar tracks going and it comes out so thick. Brew took the longest to record with all the layers and overdubbing. I would have cut down the end jam a little bit, but it is what it is." Omri: "The lyrics have to do with a band we played with when we were first starting out. They were terrible, but they had an attractive female singer who kept the room full. The mix was brutal and her voice was piercing, but her body had us glued to our seats and ruing every minute of it. Little opiate siren..." 1968 Subway Crash Mike: "1968 is the oldest song we have. It's so old in fact that the whole reason its an instrumental was because we didn't even have a singer yet. This was written on thanksgiving a few years ago. I wanted to take the craziness of The Atomic Bitchwax and put my own spin on it. Kosnik would be proud. I always thought instrumentals should get a little fucked up too. The wah freakout was inspired by Comets On Fire. Oddly enough, the slower jam came from a few chords I learned from this late 60s wild west rock and roll movie called "Zachariah." "This is my favourite to play live. For a brief time, we would work in a little bit of "Five to One" by The Doors in the middle. Maybe it will show up again one of these days..." Synapse Mike: "I always thought this was the best written song we had. I had changed this several times before I brought it in. For the final lead, there's actually two solos going on, but the second one is barely audible. I picked up the notes from Deep Purple's live version of "Mandrake Root" back when their live show was filled with 30 minute jams. We like to expand this one a little bit live ourselves. No one has ever noticed, but I play a solo over the last chorus to cover up a mistake our drummer made. The weird sounds in the background are from me literally on my hands and knees on the studio floor messing around with my phaser pedal. "Henry Rollins recently played this on his radio show; it was his favourite track on the EP. Omri was having some trouble with the vocals, so I went into the room with him. I made him laugh quickly and you can actually hear his voice yelp a little bit...and no, I'm not telling you where." Omri: "I'm not so sure where inspiration drew from on this track but the topic is clear. It's the frame of mind every right-headed man holds seconds prior to engaging in a relationship with his girl when she just so happens to have been mistreated by her previous lover. It's a combination of pity, hatred and triumph, but ultimately just plain immaturity. I like to think of it as the most honest and personal song I've written thus far and I think it shows in my performance." Influencial albums in the making of The Harold Wartooth EP > FU MANCHU| "In Search Of" Mike: "I first listened to this when I was just beginning to play guitar. This was the music I had in my head but couldn't quite play yet. The instrumentation is pretty basic but so indescribably cool. Scott Hill's senseless, washed out vocals make it all work. I realised that a great song doesn't have to be a complex one. If Black Flag and Blue Cheer ever collaborated, this is it. I've never been a fan of punk, but I unknowingly absorbed it second hand here. Eddie Glass, what a motherfucker. The sound on this record is massive. A trick I picked up was getting a great fuzz sound by using a different pedal in each speaker. It's so simple it works. This introduced me to playing around with octaves which shows up frequently in my playing. "In Search Of" is one of those few records that doesn't have a single weak track. It still sounds like my first time hearing it. Nebula are amazing as well. Their live shows are a mindfuck and the albums are so heavy and textured." AEROSMITH | "Rocks" Mike: "I've always been a huge fan of Aerosmith's 70s work. Joe Perry is why I began playing in the first place. We used to cover "Combination" when we started out. Its such a harsh sounding and drug cloaked album. Many of the lesser known tracks are some of their best; "Get the Lead Out", "Nobody's Fault". The guitar playing is really rough around the edges and I totally picked up on that style. They're almost like the heavy garage band with a flamboyant vocalist that broke big. "I learned that a well placed mistake can turn into a great hook. There are a few bum notes here, but after hearing them a few times, they sound really good and you can't imagine it any other way. Obviously, I don't care much for Aerosmith these days. Someone should really lock them in a studio with an eightball and some China White..." SOUNDGARDEN | "Louder Than Love" Omri: "The brooding rhythms and enough melodic bass to tickle even the mammoth nuggets of Hades, coupled with the menacing and inevitably mesmerizing effect of the guitars, climaxing at sheer mind-fuck and then harnessed only to send Cornell to the Maenadic frenzy of mass catharsis and the screams of human sacrifice: this is Soundgarden; this is music. It's too difficult to lose yourself in this album and not come out of the experience changed. You are raped. You may not bear the common bruises of a real such tragedy, but don't kid yourself, you are touched and unconditionally. Such is the 'evil' captured in Louder Than Love, something so beautiful and ugly, so undeniably Sabbath, that I wonder if I'm coming off like a pretentious shit or the commonplace idiot even mentioning them in the first place. Truth is, this album's owned me for years, it's bound to show every now and then in my performance and I think in this EP it definitely tries to.. CORE | "The Hustle Is On" Mike: "I was listening to this album very frequently before we recorded, more so than I usually do. In fact, when the engineer asked me what kind of guitar sound I had in mind, I played him a few tracks. There's so much happening on this record; the music is very atmospheric and visual. I love the style here, it's a mix of where Hendrix left off with a heavier approach. I never understood why this record didn't go anywhere. Truthfully, I think it was just too much; a total masterpiece. "I first heard "Supernumber" on the Tee Pee Records website and spent about 3 years trying to find this and it was well worth it. "Their guitarist, Finn Ryan, quickly became one of my favourite musicians and I tracked down everything he played on. The arrangements and changes are so unpredictable. I've never heard anything like this. Finn plays with The Atomic Bitchwax now and every time I see them I think "...I'm two feet away from the guitarist from Core." "The Hustle Is On" is going to be one of those undiscovered classic albums in years to come." ALICE IN CHAINS | "Dirt" Omri: "While at times as over-produced and glossed as even the shallowest of dolled-up 'eighties' metal, the lyrical depravity and meticulously lunatic vocal melodies off such tracks as "Sickman" and title-track "Dirt", assure this album's made whatever sinister impression it has. While I can't remember my first reactions, Alice in Chains were a huge part of my later high school years and Staley's death had me torn to shit that I'd missed out on another favorite live act. His influence in our own recording may be evident. While I've always had a sordid sense of humor, AiC definitely encouraged it; but it's the sickly harmonies that I've always craved in my own compositions and I think I may have touched on that desire a smidgeon through the recording of our EP."