Alexisonfire Singer Calls Fucked Up 'The Band of this Generation'

Posted on Jan 2nd 2013 2:45PM by Melody Lau
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Getty | Daniel Boud

Two years after they announced their break up, Canadian hardcore punks Alexisonfire banded together one last time this year for a farewell tour to coincide with their 10-year anniversary. To many, these last shows were filled with celebration and nostalgia, a blast from screamo's short-lived mainstream past. But, as frontman George Pettit points out, genres may come and go, but punk will never go away.

"It's a difficult thing to kill," Pettit tells Spinner. "Punk and hardcore is not going to go away, it goes through those waves where it becomes popular, people get excited about it again and they start putting out zines and promoting their own shows; they build a scene again.

"And then you get an asshole band like Alexisonfire who comes up and they kind of get co-opted by the public and it becomes popular culture and goes into a different direction... that sort of scenario is always happening."

Even though there has been a noticeable lack of punk and hardcore breaking out against the rise of EDM music right now, Pettit sees a crop of bands bubbling to the surface. Among them, he names Toronto band Metz, adding that they put out "one of the hypest records on the planet" this year.

"That's the exciting thing," he says. "It's that there will always be new bands, interesting records and I will always be disappointed by how little people care about them."

Another band Pettit speaks highly of came up in the Canadian hardcore scene around the same time Alexisonfire formed -- Toronto's Fucked Up. The two bands have performed together a number of times throughout the past decade, so it just made sense for Alexisonfire to summon them one last time as an opening act for one of their final four shows in Toronto.

"They were the best punk hardcore band in Toronto and then they were the best punk hardcore band in the world," Pettit gushes. "They were pushing the boundaries on what was acceptable to do in punk and they changed so much about music."

Pettit credits both Fucked Up and Moneen, who opened for Alexisonfire on the majority of these last tour dates, as big influences on his band through the years.

"I feel like they are the band of this generation," Pettit continues, on his appreciation of past Polaris Music Prize winners Fucked Up. "They've been one of the most fun bands to watch grow and evolve and gain popularity and success -- a seriously positive influence on us."

On their long-time friends, Moneen, Pettit explained that Alexisonfire used to try and emulate them in many ways.

"The sincerity to which they played, we tried to emulate that," he says. "We knew that they were the real deal, you couldn't do this halfway, you've got to lose yourself in it and play hard, and that's something that I learned -- they are one of my favorite bands of all time and they've been with us through this whole thing."

With the exception of a couple of bands like La Dispute, Pettit can safely say that screamo is a thing of the past, though.

"I was saying this a while ago, but I would say that screamo, for the most part, is done," Pettit argues. "There's not much more that can be done even though there will probably be a band that comes by and changes my opinion -- I've been listening to more Parisian jazz than screamo lately, that's a sign of how boring the music's gotten."

Watch Fucked Up's "The Other Shoe" Video