Interview with Riot City's Cale Savy, Roldan Reimer & Dustin Smith.
Hello Riot City, Let's start with an introduction of you and your band.
Cale: We are Riot City from Calgary Alberta, Canada. I'm Cale, This is Roldan and Dustin.
Cale: I got into metal you know being a young kid and actually my uncle's band was playing a battle of the bands thing and they were kind of a hardcore band and I went and watched them. There was another band playing that was a heavy metal band and that's kind of how I was like 'Wow it's really cool like aggressive and powerful all'. I want to do that, So then I started to play music and the rest is history.
Roldan: I got into heavy metal because a buddy of mine in junior high showed me this band called iron maiden. You know they're a pretty rare band nobody knows who they are. *wink wink*. I remember flipping the back of their third album 'The Number the Beast' and looking at the back of that and saying that's what I want to be from now on. Then eventually through time and trial and error I met up with these guys.
Dustin: For me it had nothing to do with heavy metal in general, just growing up my grandpa used to play the guitar. He was the only other musician in my family and I used to go over to his house when I was young. Three, Four, Five years old and he picked up the acoustic guitar and would play and sing for all of us, and i wanted to be that. I wanted that skill, That passion to put a smile on people's faces. You know as I got older I got introduced to bands like AC/DC at the early age of like seven or eight years old and I fell in love with it. I remember when I my dad asked me if I wanted a guitar for christmas because I was obsessed with music. I remember the exact point in the highway when he asked me. I was 12 years old when he asked me if I wanted a guitar for christmas. I thought about it for about 10 minutes while we were cruising down the highway and I pictured myself fuckin' chainsaw and guitars over everybody. So I eventually said yes. Yes I want to get that fuckin' guitar for christmas.
Roldan: I was first introduced to music with the likes of Frank Zappa. So Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin. A lot of those 60s-70s bands. My dad being a baby boomer, He came from that generation. So that's sort of what led me into wanting to play any kind of instrument really whether it was guitar or drums. Then over the years it just kind of went heavier from there. It went from that old 70s blues rock and roll kind of stuff to a lot more heavy stuff, Which led me to like I said before Iron Maiden.
Cale: I take most of my influences from real life situations that I've been through or people I know have been through. kind of to the point where you can interpret them whatever way you want. That is my main source of influence more so than anything else.
Dustin: Our our sound evolves every time we are together. Every single song is different. There's no label, we we wrote 'Burn the Night', We wrote a hundred songs together, we just didn't put them out because we didn't know what we wanted. I mean we liked them all but it either worked or didn't, you know.
Cale: I'd say we could fall under that category of that sub-genre but in the end it's all heavy metal. We just write music that we like and it just so happens to be this kind of music. I don't think we're gonna really defer too far from that. I don't want to get too experimental with this band. I'll start another band if I want to do that. I want to keep this band heavy metal for the people that love it.
Roldan: I don't think we had to search for this sound I think, I think what we do searched for us in a kind of way. Like in a weird way. We've all played in other bands together, not just in Riot City.
Roldan: Skull Fist and Midnight Malice, when they first rolled around. I mean those guys were the kings basically for carrying that torch for heavy metal at the time.
Dustin: Cauldron
Roldan: Cauldron as well absolutely. I mean back in what was it 2007-2008. There wasn't a lot going on but at the same time I felt that there was. You know this whole traditional heavy metal thing. In Canada we had maybe three or four bands but in Europe there was so many more and to think that a lot of bands and a lot of people around the world could look up to Canadian heavy metal bands such as Skull Fist, kind of gave at least me hope in the sense that maybe one day we can do the same.
Dustin: It's not even that at all man, heavy metal was locked up for a long time. It was locked up for almost 15 years and it still is to some sense but we're breaking it out. Heavy Metal will never be the same way as it was 20 or 30 years ago. But at least we have bands that are willing to run on the front lines of that war you know.
Honestly I think Skull Fist and Cauldron really were the start.I remember seeing their album cover and it was some stupid skeleton guy with some fucking thunderbolt in the Toronto downtown skyline. It was the stupidest looking thing but it came on and I was fuckin' impressed. Then the next thing you know this is way before I met you fuckin' guys. I met Alex and Kale and Alex was the original drummer for Skull Fist and I'm like 'No fuckin' way!'. What are the chances of that?. I saw these guys fucking jam and I used to come over every single jam that they had. It was just so killing vox, guitars and drums. When they played I was so impressed from the very first time Kale turned on his guitar amp. I was into it, Alex's drumming was fucking thunder and I was into it. I asked them every single time about when they're jamming next.
I went to every single jam and I brought beers every fucking time just to watch. I had my own band and I cancelled jams just to hang out with them. Hoping that they would ask me if I wanted to be in the fuckin' band. I was there for tryouts. Eventually they said, Why don't we just get Dustin to fucking play because I showed up more than the fuckin' guys in the band.
Is there a difference between the bands of the 80's and the new wave of traditional heavy metal bands?
Roldan: I definitely believe that there is. The old style of traditional heavy metal, I mean we got early Iron Maiden, We got Judas Priest and the difference between a lot of the new wave bands, compared to the bands of the 80's. We're way more aggressive and I think we're hungrier.
Dustin: No, We're just as hungry as they used to be.
Roldan: Yeah, you're probably right about that.
I don't know, I don't feel like we have anything to prove. I don't think we give a fuck about any of that. I think that all os us in this movement, the New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal movement. We're a bit more aggressive about how our metal is approached compared to the way it was back then. I don't know I don't i don't feel like we have anything to prove.
Dustin: I do what I do, I'm not trying to impress your sister. It just don't matter. I'm not doing it for anybody. There's a lot more struggle nowadays to be your own thing. Back then it was brand new so you could really make it your own. I think people are hungry now because you can't do it like that no more. You have to think outside the box. You really have to make it your own somehow. Because it's all been done so that's why you get these new hungry bands coming through.
I don't believe to a point that it is the same I believe that for some reason we're just obsessed you know and we're a generation of people that are obsessed with the old school way of heavy metal. We're not trying to change a god damn fucking thing about it. We're not even trying to revolutionize anything about it.
Roldan: We don't give a fuck about trying to revolutionize Heavy Metal and we're definitely not trying to rewrite anything. No, We are just trying to write a bunch of fun songs for everybody. We do this because we fuckin' love it. There is no other bottom line to it. We do it because we love it and you know if people want to call us a fucking gimmick band or a ripoff band they can and they're probably right about it at the end of the day.
Dustin: If you call me a fuckin' gimmick man i'll kick the fuck out of you.
Dustin: I'm just into what I'm into. I like death metal, I like funk, I like old outlaw country. There's just something about the aggressive driving force of heavy metal. I have no preferences in music you know. I will always worship heavy metal and specifically the British heavy metal movement but I mean nowadays I listen to fucking everything from the worst crap to the best. Wheter it's Spice Girls of whatever. I just don't give a fuck. It's just what I like to play. I've done the death metal thing, I play traditional heavy metal because it's the style I want to play my guitar.
I've played in punk bands with Kale, I've played in a thrash band, whatever the fuck you want to call it. It doesn't matter. I just hope that everybody picks up an instrument at some point. It's a language that you either understand or you don't I feel sorry for you. It's breathtaking and it really makes you feel fucking wonderful about yourself. Music is much more than a language it's more than even a way of life. It's just something that you either get or you don't, you know.
I don't like pop, I'm very particular with things I listen to, wheter it's country, funk, soul, rnb or heavy metal. But for me heavy metal always ruled for me, I appreciate the fuck out of it almost more than I appreciate the people around me. I love these guys to death but I don't care.
Roldan: I listen to everything from Iron Maiden to the most underground heavy metal to Venom and then go directly to Spice Girls and electronic music. I have a philosphy where if you don't listen to every type of music you cannot draw influences from it. If you're creative you need to be able to look outside the box and you need to be able to listen that which you wouldn't normally listen to. Even if people will call you an idiot for it.
Dustin: '329' for Example that's the poppiest song that we've ever written. It's literally inspired by pop music.
Roldan: I know but it's not my favourite track by all means. Let me make this clear I don't like the poppy elements in that song. There are some elements in that song that I really fucking love. You know there are some songs that we play that I don't like and then we rewrite it and it's fucking better than ever.
I went camping the other week and this group of people they played the New Song by Blur, they had a big fucking projector out there and they were playing all these songs. Then Aqua's Barbie Girls comes on, oh my god. I just went crazy and everybody seeing it. I own this Aqua cassette. I played it but my stereo didn't like it and it fucking ripped all of the tape. It was the only cassette that ever did that.
My first criminal activity in my life that I ever committed was stealing the first Spice Girls album from a tape rack and it's nice to this day. I still love that fucking album.
Cale: All right, All Right...
Dustin: It's kind of hard for me to point out the bad ones.
Roldan: Maybe you don't have to do that.
Dustin: No, I'll fucking answer it all. I don't give a fuck. I'll answer truthfully. It's not about traditional metal at all. I know a ton of bands that play metal but it's not about sub genres. It's all about the metal movement.
The British heavy metal movement that wasn't just Tokyo Blade and Iron Maiden. It also had bands like Venom involved in the movement. So it was a movement or a wave of bands that came out that just described the sound at the time. The 'New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal' wave must be understood as this as well. This isn't a genre, this is a group of people that play very similar music but from completely different angles in my opinion. I don't think that Riot City sounds like Enforcer or Skull Fist but at the same time I don't think that Stalker sounds like Enforcer or vice versa or Seven Sisters or any of those bands. We all have our own different takes on the direction. We write our own book and it doesn't matter if you guys in this documentary wants to put it in a category. We're talking about one fucking movement.
Listen man, I know fucking hundreds of bands that don't get the recognition they deserve. They should be in this fucking documentary too. We got Chrome, We got fucking Marshall Law. We got Gatekrashör. Everybody fucking rules and if you don't like it then you're a fucking idiot and you listen to Manowar only. Go and fuck yourself.
Roldan: Listen to Manowar only, haha.
Dustin: Like I said it's not about traditional heavy metal, if you have muscles then you have a good fucking heavy metal band. You can be a scrawny little fucking twig just like me but if you have the muscle behind your tone then you have something. You can be a progressive little fuck. It don't matter.
Like I said earlier we're not trying to revolutionize we're not trying to fucking even change the face of heavy metal. We are literally doing what everyone else has done a million times. We just happen to be good at what we do. People should be happy that there's new bands even if it's similar to something that they loved from 1983.
Cale: We live in a time period where everything is changing much faster than it used to due to the internet. The flavors are constantly changing faster than what any major record label can ever predict. It used to be the flavor of the month and now it's the flavor of the minute. It's hard to write a goddamn song these days because you're trying not to copy somebody else's work.
Dustin: I would like to point out that on our new album there's a Van Halen riff that was stolen and rewritten and I would like you idiots to figure it out. It's more challenging to write things now and not include something that was written 40 years ago. When I was about 16 years old I owned a bootleg of Van Halen's Dance the Night Away. It was eventually officially released and it was from the U.S. Festival 1983. It had a bunch of behind the scenes material and they had a camera guy walking around backstage before Van Halen went live. David Lee Roth was fucking some chick on the piano. The biggest lesson came from this fuckin' coke head, he said that if you steal from one person it's plagiarism but if you steal from everyone it's art and he's a hundred percent right about that, and that's that.
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