After the interview with Denis Barthe last year (which was censored by Google for no reason) I decided to make another one — a really in-depth interview with a lot of unknown details and funny memories about the golden era of thrash metal. It took us a few long conversations via Zoom and a hell of a time to get it all together afterward. But here it is, first part of the interview where Denis "Sasquatch" Barthe remembers his childhood, formative years of Aggression, his involvement in the famous "World War III" in Montreal and the first demos.
Hello Denis! Since it’s a retro interview, let’s talk about your childhood. You mentioned in our previous talk that your father was from the USA. How come that he moved to Canada and what did he do for living there?
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| Maurice Joseph Barthe |
And your mother, is she still alive?
My adoptive mom and my birth mom, they're both passed now. I met my real mom when I was 28 years old, fantastic woman. We clicked right away. It's hard to explain, right? You're a 28-year-old grown-up, and you meet this woman, and then it just clicked. My relationship with my adoptive mother was not that great. I don't know why she was not able to have her own kid, but I don't think she was fully willing to adopt a kid. And then I did suffer from that love-hate relationship, I guess. As a woman, I guess, if you want to have a baby, it's difficult sometimes if you can't. And I guess adopting one, of course, you want to love the baby, and you want to treat him like your own, but it's not as easy as it seems, because there's that constant reminder that you're not able to have your own child. So, you know, it was a rocky road.
How old were you when you were adopted?
That's a crazy story as well. What I was told is, my mom, when she had me, she was only 15 years old. Her parents didn't want her to keep me. My birth mom did keep me, I would say, maybe six, seven, eight weeks, because she didn't want to give me up. But eventually, she needed to, so they put me in a convent and I was raised by nuns, which is kind of crazy. I think I was there for about a year and a half, and I was adopted somewhere between a year and a half and two years old. My adoptive parents picked me up because I was the one crying and screaming the most. I was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. And I was raised in the suburb of Laval, that's where I got exposed to hockey and hard rock music and metal and all that stuff.
When did you discover that you were adopted? And how was it?
Around 11—12 years old my cousin started calling me Sasquatch, because I was almost six feet tall. And, you know, I didn't look like anybody in the family. My parents at that time sat me down and said, “You know, we're not your real parents. We love you as our own, but you're adopted”. And after that they never told me who my parents were. I heard so much rumours after that, like I was from Arizona, I heard that my dad was Italian. But when I met my real mom, I got some clarity on where actually I was from. I was baptized twice. Obviously, big failure both times. But my birth name was Marco Morin. And then I was rebaptized after as Denis Barthe.
How did you get into heavy music in such a sweet, nice family? 
Denis in 1979
My parents used to listen to a lot of French Canadian music. They also liked obscure stuff like Demis Roussos from Greece, and Nana Mouskouri and some of these European singers and songwriters. But I remember vividly watching Elvis movies on TV with my grandma and really liking Elvis playing guitar, singing the songs and the girls around him and all that. I was really attracted to that. And right away I asked for an acoustic guitar. I think I was eight or ten years old. And then I had two, I called them my cousin, but they were two sons of my dad’s best friend. They were really into Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin, and Uriah Heep, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and all the greats, first two Queen's, and they really had a very wide collection of art rock. I loved when we went to their house, I would go in their basement. They had black white posters and smoked weed in there. I used to spend hours in their basement, looking at album covers, and be fascinated by this entire thing. For me it was everything. And then I started to buy my own records. The first one I ever bought was Elvis Presley “Live in Las Vegas”. He's got a black leather jacket on the record with a Gibson Les Paul. And after that, I bought, I think it was Kiss “Alive” and Kiss “Alive II”. And then after that, there was no turning back. I bought Aerosmith “Rocks”, Nazareth “Razamanaz”, Deep Purple “Fireball”. And then I was like, “Hey, my acoustic guitar is not doing the sound that these guys are doing”. So I bought my first electric guitar. I was 10 or 12. And then my first distortion pedal, which was Big Muff. Nobody in my family played any instrument. So it's all self-taught, like, hours in front of a turntable, taking the needle back and on the vinyl and trying to figure out how to play it. And I would say I was able to figure out pretty good. Of course, later on, when you become more professional, you realize you were playing not exactly what it was. I spent a lot of time listening to Ramones. And after that I tried to learn Aerosmith and Kiss. That was a lot more difficult than it seems. And then when Van Halen came out, that was it. I was trying to play Van Halen, like, all day, all night, all the time. So, that's how I was brought into music. Definitely, those two cousins were a big part. They really exposed me to everything that the 70s had to offer when it comes to hard rock.
And how did you discover extreme type of metal, like thrash or death metal?
I think it came naturally to me. I was always looking for the faster songs. And I don't know if people realize, but “Deep Purple in Rock” for something that was released in 1970 is a very heavy record. And when I got “Fireball”, I liked the song “Fireball”. And after that, I was always looking for the faster song of anything I could find. So it was a natural transition, I think around when I was 12 or 13 I started to be able to go by myself to record shop, look at covers, and I started to listen to the Dead Boys and the Damned, and, of course, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols. And I was looking for things that was, you know, the fastest possible. Even Ram Jam, which are known for the song “Black Betty”, but they do have on their second album some pretty fast songs, like “Hurricane Ride”. And then I started to get into Starz, Styx, and some of those bands that had heavier, faster song, like Queen, “Sheer Heart Attack”, of course, “Stone Cold Crazy”. So I was always pushed towards these songs. Then I got Motorhead's “Overkill”, and then I was like, “OK, now, it's starting to get there”. I remember listening to Rainbow “Spotlight Kid” from “Difficult to Cure” and that was what I wanted. I wanted to do something faster and faster. Once one of my buddies said, “Hey, let's go to Rock On Stock", which was the Banzai Records. And there I saw Venom's “Welcome to Hell”. And that was it. We bought it and then never looked back. That's all I wanted to do. We used to play covers of Rush, Genesis, Yes, ELP. But also I was trying to get them to do some Blue Oyster Cult and Kansas and some of that music that was a little bit more or less straight up prog. So then I started to make a plan, “OK, who in Montreal would want to play that type of music with me”? And it was almost like a two year search to find people who wanted to do that. So that's how I got into. So I kept looking for the fastest possible I could purchase. My favorite song on any given record was the fastest song. It's still the same.
I believe that you were a part of a trading circuit back then.
I did get some tape trading, of course, after we met the guys from Voivod and Wayne Archibald. And some of the legendary tape trading guys at the time.
Wayne William Archibald, the photographer?
Yeah. He always had the ability to be like, “Hey, listen to this band. Hey, listen to this band”. And it was always like amazing stuff. And after that I started to buy magazines and bands would put their address there. I was in correspondence with Nasty Ronnie from Nasty Savage, Katon from Hirax, and all kind of those bands. But I felt like the guys from Voivod had a real pulse on what was good. They made me discover some really obscure punk bands in the L.A. scene. I think they had tapes from Verbal Abuse and some of these bands that they made me discover that I didn't know at the time. So I don't know if I did send as much tapes. I know once I would receive it in my circle, I would spread the news, “Hey, I got this band, Tygers of Pan Tang! Come to my house, listen to this, listen to this”. And people would bring their cassette and they would take copy and then they spread the word. And it's crazy how well it worked back then, because, the first time I've seen Iron Maiden, it was “Killers” tour. And I couldn't believe that there were like another nine hundred people in Montreal that listened to Iron Maiden. And then, for “The Number of the Beast”, they played in a 6,000 — 7,000 seater arena. And I was like, “Where are these people coming from”? And then for the next album “Piece of Mind”, they played at the Montreal Forum in front of 20,000 people. There was not like social media or anything. It was more than a musical movement. It was definitely a lifestyle change. I still remember getting a tape with Hellhammer and being like, “Oh, Jesus, what is this? These guys must be murders. Where are they from? Oh, they're from Switzerland. Aren't they supposed to make watches out there”? So yeah, tape trading was definitely a big part of the scene. And a lot of people discovered Aggression in that way. Our manager at the time, Johnny Hart, did send a lot of these demos, cassette tape all over the world.
I think at the time Canadian radio station needed to play a certain percentage of Canadian content. So we were always exposed to April Wine, BTO and some of those bands. I really like Triumph a lot. As for Anvil, I heard "Metal on Metal” first. And right away I was hooked on that. And every time they have a new record now, I still buy it. The first two Exciter records are so good. They made good transition from New Wave of British Heavy Metal into thrash. I remember I bought Voivod “War and Pain”, and I was like, “Oh my God, these guys! It is so obscure and dark and industrial. It's not pretty, but so beautiful at the same time”. And when I realized where they were from Quebec, I thought at that time that everything was possible, that I wanted to do the same thing. And then I started to be friends with the guys from Slaughter and Sacrifice. We, myself, my bass player Dug, and Burn, used to drive to Toronto, hang out with Sacrifice and Slaughter. And these guys were like metalheads from head to toe. Slaughter were crazy guys, there was no filter on the way that they spoke in their mind and just the way they lived. Slaughter and Sacrifice had their own cult, they had like 50, 60, 70, 100 people following them all the time, everywhere. I find Canadian thrash has its own little vibe, very independent from each other. Voivod sounds like Voivod, Sacrifice sounds like Sacrifice, Slaughter sounds like Slaughter. And I, I think a part of that is because we all grew up, idolizing Rush, who were just such masters, and every song was painted with different colors and a different brush. So I think it was just normal for us to try to have all different sound.
And what about some other cool heavy metal bands from Montreal, like Crypt, Death Dealer and Dagger. Were you friends with them or was there kind of animosity or rivalry between thrash and heavy metal bands?
Not really. I know guys in all those bands and we all grew up on the same stuff. Dagger used to do crazy good cover of Riot’s “Altar of the King”. Crypt were great, great musician as well. Their singer actually became our first singer. So his name was Dave. Yeah. That's the first time we played with the name Aggression. I forgot his last name. And same with Sword. We played some shows with them — great guys, great musicians. Death Dealer also. They were more like a Maiden kind of band when we initially heard them. I'm still friends with most of those guys. And, you know, they were really important for the transition from 70s classic rock into thrash metal with Aggression, Voivod, Damnation and all those bands that followed after that. All these bands we used to play at the Mustache. Anvil made that place legendary, Destruction played there, Celtic Frost, Aggression played there. So it was right across the street from Montreal Forum. It is really special place for the history of rock and metal in Montreal.
What about bands like Razor, DBC, Infernal Majesty? I heard that Infernal Majesty were like prima donnas and no one wanted to be around them or to play with them.
Well, the funny thing with Infernal Majesty is when I moved to Vancouver, it's one of the first guys that I met. And they are awesome guys, no issue. I think what happened is, they used to be in a glam metal band called Laced or something like that. They used to play like Ratt, Motley Crue and that type of music. And when Slayer got popular, they then switched. People used to call them like Infernal Travesty, Posers, you name it, right? But in fact, their first album “None Shall Defy” is definitely one of the awesome records. People from Satyricon, all famous bands refer to that album as their favorite thrash albums of those times. We were very close to DBC, we grew up with them. Razor together with Exciter and Anvil were a bit older than us. So even when I see Lips ,or Dan Beehler or Dave Carlo, to me, it's like I'm meeting Gene Simmons.
And since you are a big hockey fan, let's talk about hockey for a while. Do you remember the first game you've ever seen?
Well, I think it would have been around like 1971, 72, 73. We used to watch hockey on TV at home. My dad would put it every Saturday night. It was on national TV and we always watched it. But I think the first game I ever saw was actually at the Boston Garden and it was Montreal — Boston. And I was a little kid, like maybe six. The only memory I have of that game is some of the Habs player would get hit. We had really good seat, we were closer to the ice level and after they would get hit, I would hear them swear in French and then start skating after the other player. And my dad was like, “Plug your ear. Don't listen to what they're saying”. So I think my first game was at the Boston Garden. Then, of course, we watched the 1972 series, Russia — Canada, and every game was like a crazy moment in the hockey world. But that that would be my first game. I think I must have been five, six. And that's just around the time that I started to play hockey myself.
No, I didn't have the skating skills. but I think I had the hockey sense. I remember scoring a lot of goals and I was much bigger than the other kids around me. But because I was so tall, I think that my ankles and my skating were suffering for me growing too fast. So basically I was too tall, almost like a giraffe on the ice, having a hard time to controlling the skating. And you know, I wish I would have had better training and better patience and work addicts like I'm looking at my sons now and how much they work to be masters at the sport that they love. I was nowhere near committed like they are. At the time I made a conscious decision to switch from sports to music because I played hockey till I was about 12, 13, 14. And then I played baseball until my hair was too long to be able to see the ball. Music was always primary, my interest, and then with hockey close second. I wish I would have spent more time and I wish I would have done more. And of course, back then, the skates we used to use were made out of wood or I don't even know, but it was not it was not that comfortable at what we do now. And I didn't play inside an arena until I was 12 years old. All the games were outside. I regret it to not have spent more time on hockey. But I still play today. I'm not not the greatest, but for me, it's just to have fun. And I love hockey, so I still do it.
Why haven't you recorded a song about hockey yet? Something like Anvil did with “Blood on the Ice”?
It's not that I haven't tried before, but I always think like no matter what I try to do, it sounds a little cheesy. I haven't had the right recipe of music and lyrics yet to make it fit. But I've been working for the last three Aggression record. I've been working on one song that is supposed to be about hockey. And I can feel that in the next two, three records, that song will finally be okay. I have the song title and I have the riffs, but when I look at the lyrics and all that… I want to try to make a song that the hockey world could play when kids are playing hockey and things like that. I want to try to make something that would represent truly our passion for hockey. So I think I put too much thoughts into the song. To me, it's such an important topic. I want it to be perfect.
I remember in the 90s, there was a video game called Mutant League Hockey. So maybe you can try to write a song from that perspective?
At some point in the 80s, I started a punk band with Gate, the drummer from Aggression, and Dan Weiss from the band Damnation and one of our friends. We used to play punk covers and a lot of Ramones and Minor Treat, all that stuff. But we wrote some own songs. I would like to release them someday. I still have the lyrics and I still remember how the song goes. It's completely like it's almost like a S.O.D. gone wrong. I think it would be cool for Aggression at some point to have an EP or like B-Sides and just release all these songs. And some of these songs are talking about hockey and Godzilla and King Kong and Voltron playing hockey against each other. And it's just wild stuff.
So let's finally talk about Aggression. How did you get in touch with the guys from the band? I believe that was back in 1985 or maybe earlier.
Yves "Dug" Duguay
When I was in the other prog band, I started to jam with a drummer, a friend of mine, and we started to play Slayer. That was like 83, when Slayer released “Show No Mercy", we already started to play Saxon “Dallas 1 PM”, used to cover some Armored Saint and a lot of New Wave of British Heavy Metal like Tygers of Pan Tang, some early Def Leppard, and Diamond Head, and all that. So we used to play, me and him, just the two of us. And I met Burn, who was the other guitar player in Aggression, through some mutual friends. So on Halloween 1984, we went to a bar in Laval, Quebec, and we said, ‘OK, let's do it. Let's start a fucking heavy band”. And that's when we started to recruit for real musicians. because the drummer that I had at the time was not able to do Slayer, and Metallica, and all that stuff. We heard that there was a band that was playing “Die Hard” from Venom and they were playing “Acid Queen”. And we're like, “No, that can't be”. And so we went to a jam space in Laval, in freaking woods. And these guys, Botcher, the original singer from Aggression, was on bass at the time and singing. They had a guitar player and Gate was on drums. And as soon as they stopped playing, I said, “Hey, I want you guys in my band”. But I told the other guitar player, “You can be a roadie”. And I don't even know why they just went with it. We wanted to call ourselves Asylum at first. And we played our first show as Asylum. And after that show, we met Johnny Hart, who became our manager. And then shortly after, we switched our name to Aggression in 1985. Shortly after, we recruited Dug on bass and Botcher moved to vocals. We used to play pretty much “Kill Em All” from front to back. We just didn't play “Jump on the Fire” and "Anesthesia” but everything else we played. We also learned most of “Show No Mercy”. And we used to play the song “Metal Church" by Metal Church, “March of the Saints” by Armored Saints, “The Temper” by Trouble, and then we started to write our own songs. I think “Metal Slaughter” is the first song that we wrote and after that “Torment” or “The Evil Pox”. When I met Burn, he was more into like Queensryche and more melodic metal, but I slowly brought him to the dark side and then after that he was a great contributor to Aggression.
How could you describe the personalities of the original band members?
Gaëtan "Gate" Bourassa
Gate was one of the most destructive characters I’ve ever met in my life. That guy was a true rebel, super nice guy, big heart, but also can easily be very crazy, legendary drinker, drug abuse, you name it. It's funny because the first time I met him was even before Asylum. One of my friend in high school hired me to collect from people that didn't pay their drugs and Gate was one of the guys I had to collect from. So when I entered our jam space and he saw me, he totally remembered me. He was a huge John Bonham fan and to this day I don't know how he easily switched from a hard rock to thrash metal. He played much faster than we did and we could not follow him. There was no limit to how fast he could play. Gate had no hair like no eyebrow, no body hair, but he completely didn't care what people think of it.
Burn would be a really nice guy, but when he would drink like 10 beers he turned into an asshole. And he was definitely more melodic, he was big fan of Queen, Iron Maiden. He was the guy who brought the melody to the band. He was also like the captain, the leader, he was really good at making everybody get together. Gate and Burn were older a couple years than us, and they had a little bit more maturity. Burn was really good at making sure that the jams space was getting paid, that we would stay on track, keep writing and things like that.
Dug, the bass player, was the odd man. We were all from the north shore and he was from the south shore of Montreal and he was our scapegoat. We used to punch him, sit on him, push him. We were like complete bullies with that guy. And you know what? He always stood back up and kept playing. He's the one who introduced us to Johnny Hart. He had a lot of knowledge of punk and metal and he always brought some good bands.
Botcher was like pretty much dangerous. He also was very intelligent guy, very good musically. He had a vision on what Aggression should be. And he was dangerous, like he would hurt. I think he was probably like a younger version of Dead from Mayhem. He would cut himself and do things to animals. But, you know, we made it work. He had a lot of live presence, so when we would play he could get people to start acting like crazy pretty fast. Once we completely destroyed the Mustache. Botcher made people break chairs and tables. He was like instigator, I guess this is the right word for his contribution.
Éric "Botcher" Langlois
I'm a bit confused about his nickname. At some sources he is credited as Butcher…
His nickname was Botcher which means not doing anything, doing a quick job. So he was more like a guy who gets the job done, but not well. That's why he picked his own nickname. I don't know if it really matched him, because he was able to do something really well, but that's the nickname he chose for himself.
And why did you all decide to use nicknames at all? Was it inspired by bands like Venom?
Well, that's how we would call each other. I would never call Burn Bernard, I would always call him Burn. And to Gate, I would never say Gaetan. They would never call me Denis. And Eric, we would never call him Eric. Dug's last name was Duguay. So the nickname is the name we would use. Burn never called me Sasquatch. He would call Sasqbitch. And still to this day if he writes about me that's what he uses. I don't think it was like a conscientious effort to have nickname. I think we just wrote that because that's how we would talk to each other. We just wrote the names that way on the record.
On one of the Aggression's demos there the guy named Death. Was it you?
I think they used to call me like that when they were not calling me Sasquatch, which was too long. They just called me Den and then they said like, “Well, Den doesn't mean anything. Why don't we use Death because it's close to it?” But nobody ever called me that. I don't even know why they just didn’t use Sasquatch on that demo, because that was my true nickname that my cousin gave me.
Okay. And do you remember your first ever live show and how was it?
Well, I played some shows prior to Aggression, because I was in a punk band called The Brats when I was 14 and we did play shows at that time. But the first Asylum/Aggression show we played was at our high school and the guys from Voivod were in attendance, which was a big deal for us. It was a gymnasium and it was above 500 tickets sold. But somebody made fake copies of the tickets. It was just a piece of cardboard and they sold more so what happened is about 2,000 people showed up at our high school. But there was only room in the gymnasium for like 500. So there were people everywhere and all the windows were open. There were people in backyard, in front yard, like all over. The band that opened for us was called God Warriors, they were friends of a friend of ours. They were playing like Queensryche, Maiden, Priest and they were dressed in white like religious guys, and then we came with our upside down crosses playing Slayer, Metallica, things like that. So It was the first show. It was well received. It really created a notoriety for us in our town. And after that every time we played for the next like four years. It was always insane. It was always like over the top, too many people on stage, diving, crowd surfing, broken legs, broken ankles, broken arms, blood, fights, you name it. But as to the first show, I remember a bit is us just playing the songs fast, playing them well and people being blown away. And that's after that show Johnny Hart said to us, “I want to take care of you guys”. And then he was able to bring the band to a higher level and get us to be known internationally with his contacts. He was doing a magazine at the time called “Metal K.O.” in Quebec and he had a lot of connection around the world. But yeah, that's the first show, I think we had like special effect, little tiny bombs and a little smoke show and we tried to make it as cool as possible. I remember the place being like super packed, way too many people.
I guess you were never invited in that school again.
No, I think they were happy. They made some money with the event. Yeah, the police came and they had to do some security and all that. But it was amazing how many metal fans there were in Montreal at that time. The movement was so big, and most kids were into metal. It was magical times.
I can’t imagine so many people coming to see some beginners these days. Even well-known artists sometimes attract only 200 or 300 people.
Like I said it was completely different times. We were the only band in Montreal aside Voivod playing that kind of music. There was nobody else or if they were they were just starting. We kind of started to create a movement. We had a huge gang of people similar to those guys from Sacrifice and Slaughter in Toronto. We had a group of friends. It was like a hundred of us.
You already mentioned the place called Moustache. And what about places like Station 10 and Rising Sun? Did you play there?
The craziest show we ever played was in the Rising Sun. The band opening for us I think was Bad Results and another band… I forgot who it was. The Rising Sun was a reggae bar that used to have punk shows. The Adolescents, Descendents, Suicidal Tendencies and all that used to play there. At the time when we played the Rising Sun Aggression popularity was rising. We had the demo out and we started to have more and more notoriety. More people wanted to come and see what the fuzz was about, because our shows were always like crazy. I remember I got to the show late and there was a line of people around the block. I would say that the bar could probably host like 250 to 300 people at max, and way over a thousand people showed up. They had to open the third floor. The first floor was a business, then the second floor was the right side and it was another floor on top. So people got in and they were inside the bar on the wrong floor. They could not see us play, but they could hear us. There was over a thousand people in there. We started the show with “By a Reaping Hook”, and the first time we started to play people all fell over us. They fell over Botcher and fell into the drum kit and Gate fell backwards and then my guitar jack came out and all my pedals and everything flew in the crowd. We only played like 30 seconds and everything was destroyed. Our amplifier almost started to tip because they were pulling on the cable and there was like 30 people that fell on stage with us. We had to stop the show and get people to back out and then we had a team of about like nine people in front of the stage blocking people from falling. And fans would dive from speakers and from the bar. I'd never seen anything like that. But it took 15—20 minutes to be able to play again because Gate had to reassemble his drum kit and I had to find my guitar pedals that were in the crowd. People were searching, “Oh, here's your distortion pedal. There's your tuner”. After the show there was like three or four ambulances outside and people with like broken legs and completely bleeding. It's the most violent show we ever played and like to this day people talk about it. Those things used to exist way back then. It was completely normal like crowd surfing, crazy stage diving and people fighting the entire set we played. We just pummeled them with “Forsaken Survival”, “Frozen Aggressor”, “Green Goblin” one after the other and people were going like crazy.
Now let's talk about the famous “World War III” festival. Could you tell me how you got involved in that? Were you friends with then Voivod's manager Maurice Richard who ran that show?
Johnny Hart, our manager, was really involved in the festival. I think he helped with the bands' selection. There was at some point discussion for Aggression to play but somehow it never panned out. I think honestly we should have played, we would have matched properly in that festival. But we got involved in hosting the bands. That's where I met Debbie Abono, the manager from Possession — an amazing lady. We connected right away with Scmier, Mike and Tommy from Destruction. We partied our asses off the entire time that we were in Montreal with them. We spent a lot of time with Tom, Martin and Reed from Celtic Frost. I picked up bands from the airport and drove them to the hotel. I hang out with Dave Austin and Ben Meyers from Nasty Savage. We helped them with driving them back and forth from their hotel to the airport. They came to our jam space and we did some legendary jam with all the bands. I don't even think we were that sour about not playing at the festival. I was so proud that such a heavy metal event would happen in Montreal. It put Montreal on the map as the place to go for metal. It's hard to explain but it was the beginning or the confirmation of a metal movement. We had all access passed and took the opportunity to make new friends.
And what was it like to meet Destruction for the first time at the airport? I believe that only Schmier spoke some broken English back then.
Well, they didn’t speak English that much. When I met Mike 30 years later his English wasn’t great. So we kept the conversation really simple like, "Beer. Piss. Beer. Toilet. Girl". But we made it work. We kind of bonded over metal. Sometimes I forget that the linguistic ability back then was not what it is today and we were not able to communicate as much as we wanted to. Of course, it was a bit easier with Possessed and Nasty Savage. I think Tom Warrior’s English was pretty good. Reed was American so there was no problem. Martin was able to speak a little bit of French. I spent a lot of time with Schmier, Tommy and Mike that weekend. For example, Possessed were on stage and Mike was saying, “Good!” That was it.
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| Aggression, Destruction and Celtic Frost |
But Schmier somehow managed to have relationships with a Canadian girlfriend and visited Canada after the festival.
It was very easy for Shmier to get ladies' attention. Tall, with blondish hair, he looked more like a real glam metal, like he would fit in Ratt and Motley Crue. His girlfriend name was Elaine. I brought her to the festival, she was a long-time friend, and we're still friends to this day. They were together for 10 years, she moved to Germany, and she was living there for years, and she helped Schmier out with lyrics on some of the albums after that. So every time Shmier would come to Montreal, he stayed at my place with her, or we would go to her place, and it just made that connection between Aggression and Destruction even stronger.
And is it true that one night Tommy, the drummer of Destruction, got lost in Montreal?
I would say I don't remember, but it does sound familiar. There's a lot of things that happened during that trip. Tommy could easily drink 20, 30 beers. Destruction were like professional beer drinkers. These guys at some point were not able to function. Shmier was not as bad, but Mike and Tommy at some point, they couldn't walk. So I wouldn't be surprised if Tommy ggot lost, and that would not surprise me.
And another rumour says that once Schmier saw Gate playing drums, he asked him to join Destruction right there, saying something like, “I would trade you for Tommy if you just accept my request”.
Yeah, I never heard of that, but again, maybe it did happen. I wouldn't be surprised can only imagine Gate playing with Destruction, that would have been insane.
As far as I remember, before the festival Destruction and Celtic Frost were rivals, almost enemies. How did they communicate during the festival?
I thought that after “World War III” both bands kind of buried the hatchet and were okay. I think that both bands were competing against each other in Europe, and after Montreal they became more accepting.
During the days of the festival musicians of Voivod, Aggression, Celtic Frost and Destruction joined for a jam. What are your memories about that? Who played what?
I guess I stayed on guitar the entire time. I think Aggression played first. We played “Total Desaster” and “Mad Butcher”. And then the guys from Destruction were like, “Holy fuck, what's happening”? I think they were just blown away. And then Schmier took the mic and started singing. And then we said, "Hey, that's not all". Then we started to play Hellhammer. We played “Third of the Storm” and you should have seen Tom Warrior's and Martin's face when we played that. They couldn't believe that a band anywhere in the world would spend the time to learn a Hellhammer song. And of course, after that, we went “Into the Crypt of Ray”, “Procreation of the Wicked”, “Dethroned Emperor” and “Circle of the Tyrants”. And then Tom took the mic and started singing. You should have seen the expression on their face. They couldn't believe it. And their mouthes were open. So then after that, we started to switch. Reed St. Mark came on drums. And me, Reed, and Dug played some Frank Zappa like “Wind Up Working in a Gas Station”. Then we played some obscure prog stuff like Jean de Conti. And then after that, we started to jam some Motorhead. Then I think Blacky took the bass and Away was on drums. I don't remember after that too much who played with what, but it was just like after that, just like somebody would scream a song and then sound like, oh, I know it. We played “Breaking the Law” and “Rapid Fire” and “Stealer” by Priest and some Maiden and Slayer and whatever. We played late in the night. And in our jam space, there was about, I would say, easily 50 to 75 people in there. There were people everywhere. The guys from Possessed and Nasty Savage were not there yet. So they didn't participate in this jam session. But yeah, for these guys to come to Canada and see a band play “Third of the Storm” was mind-blowing. And I learned all the solos of Celtic Frost note for note. So Tom was like, “Oh my God, you're playing it better than I do”. It was magical. Another magical moment, man.
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| Aggression with Tom G. Warrior |
And what about the festival itself? Which band impressed you the most?
I think it was difficult for a band from out of town to perform well and for the sound man to capture that noise. I was very impressed with Nasty Savage's stage show. Nasty Ronnie covered in blood, hitting himself with TVs and stuff. That was impressive. I think Possessed, Celtic Frost and Destruction were great, but I think there was like volume or sound issues with all three bands. And then when Voivod came on stage, they sounded like gods, like the sound was perfect and they definitely had better soundcheck. I don't know what happened, but Voivod that night, I think established themselves as a professional, very advanced metal band. And I felt like performances of Celtic Frost, Destruction, Possessed were great, but the sound was not as good as when Voivod played. So from the stage performance, I was impressed with Nasty Savage, but from an overall performance, I would say Voivod were the best band that night.
Maybe that was the plan of Maurice Richard to show that a domestic band could outdo international bands?
It could be, I never put too much thought into it. I never believe in the politics of making other bands sound bad so your band sounds better. Like, let everybody play and let the paying customer enjoy the event. If you need to make yourself look better, it's because you're not as good as the other band. It should happen naturally. But at the same time, Voivod was from Montreal. They maybe had more time to prepare, but they definitely stood out that night. Piggy, Away, Blacky, Snake, they sounded really, really ready to perform. So kudos to them.
And you already said that your manager was Johnny Hart. And as far as I'm aware, there was another manager with the last name Laval.
Oh, Big Laval. Yeah, Big was like Johnny's right hand guy, amazing guy, did so much for aggression, saved my life a couple of times. He was not only taking photography, lots of pictures, but also assisting Johnny with the managerial duties, helping us carrying shit. And the guy had a harder goal. He was a very important character in Aggression history. He was with us every step of the way.
So what’s the story with saving your life?
We went to see the band Outrage, another Quebec thrash metal band that Johnny used to manage, in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. And I don't know what happened. I don't know what I'd done or something, but some guy put a gun right to my forehead, right in the crowd. The guy just said something like, "Fuck you, I'm going to shoot you". And as he was about to do that, Big Laval completely tackled him in a most professional American football way you can imagine. The guy dropped his gun and Big held him on the wall. And then he just told him, “If you fucking do anything to him, we're going to fucking kill you”. And then the guy just ran and went outside and Big took the gun and then we turned it into security. But yeah, I don't know what I had done. I don't know if I looked at his girlfriend or what, but he was about to shoot me. And Big just tackled him like a professional football player. Yeah. Trash metal, Montreal in the 80s. It was never a dull moment.
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| Aggression and Outrage that night when Denis almost was shot |
Wow! You were lucky! Thanks to Big Laval you managed to record first Aggression’s demo in 1985. How did that go?
I don't remember the guy who engineered it. He definitely was not like a metal guy and it was all new to us. I never recorded anything in the studio before. So it was just like learn as you go. If you listen to the demo, there's a lot of volume peaking. We were playing our amp at 10. Everything was cranked. So it was difficult for the sound engineer to capture all that metal energy. And we were tuned like we didn't have a tuner at the time, so we would not know if we were standard or step down. But when you listen to it now, you realize we were a full step there, which is different than how we were playing live. But everything you hear on that demo is the first time we recorded anything and completely raw, right off the floor metal with no studio tricks. We just played and that's what came out of it. But we had no idea what we were doing.
And I believe that you've always been the main songwriter in Aggression. Did other contribute something to that demo? 
Bernard "Burn" Caudron
Yeah, I was definitely the guy who wrote the most of the music and we would bring it to the jam space and then we would work on it as a team. Botcher was writing music and lyrics with me, and Burn worked on his own songs, Botcher on his own songs. Dug was contributing as well. But most of the time, it was just me and Gate going to the studio first and try ideas together. And then we were bringing the other members like, “OK, Botcher, what do you take?” And then he would be like, “No, let's do that twice. No, that's not good. Let's add that”. So it would have been fun to see what kind of music we would have done after that, because we just kept evolving and getting better and better at what we had done. At some point we were used to rehearse 12 hours a day, seven days a week. That's all we were doing. And you could see the band was getting tighter and tighter and tighter.
OK. Some of the songs from the demo later appeared on compilations by New Renaissance Records. So how did they find you? Was it through Johnny Hart's connection?
Yeah. As soon as the demo was done, Johnny sent it everywhere to all his connections and getting us interviews and more presence in the magazine and things like that. And then New Renaissance Records reached out to us and said they wanted to use our songs. We went back to the studio and recorded three songs. So the versions on New Renaissance Records are not the same version that on the demo. The tuning is different. The performance is a little bit better. For us, it was like, “Oh, my God, a company is interested in us!” So we were very, very fortunate, excited, happy. And it really motivated us to keep going and having that New Renaissance Records contract.
Did they offer you a proper deal after that?
I think they might have done that. But Johnny had a really specific plan. He heard a lot of horror stories from other bands working with other labels. And he didn't want us to go to those problems. Scott Givens, one of his contacts, a friend of ours, was starting a brand new label, Facemelt Records, and we would be the main act on the label. So instead of being one of 40 bands on Combat, one of 40 bands on Metal Blades, Johnny wanted us to be the primary band on Facemelt Records. But once we recorded “Forgotten Skeleton”, it took forever to press it and then it never came out.
I know that later you were pissed off with Johnny's decision to sign you to Facemelt. He probably should try to secure a deal with Metal Blade or Roadrunner. Would you agree that it would be a better decision?
If I remember correctly back in that period of time, we were getting really impatient. We wanted to go out and play in the U.S. We wanted to play in Europe. We wanted to get out and we saw a lot of other bands doing it. Why not us? So I think at first we were excited to go with Facemelt Records and with Scott, who was a great guy. He was one of the nine guys in front of the stage when we played the Rising Sun to prevent the people from falling on us. I think we were OK with the Facemelt selection. What we were not OK with is how long it took for it to never happen. When you're 19 years old, six months feels like three years. So then we decided to part ways with Johnny and then I went with Banzai Records. Maybe not the best decision we could have taken at the time. And shortly after that, the band was no longer exist. I believe if we would have been a little bit more patient, focusing on going into the jam space, start recording, start writing a new album right away instead of waiting for that album, Aggression might have a longer career at the time. But we just didn't have the maturity to make the right decision. You know, I don't have any regret in my life. But I think it would be cool if someday you can go back into the past and then relive a portion of your life again with more knowledge and more maturity and see what would have happened from that. What would have happened from “Forgotten Skeleton” being released in 1986 and how much of an impact it would have had on the metal world?
Back to the first demo of Aggression. Years later it was included in a compilation called “Essential Quebec Metal Demo Tapes”. Would you agree that the demo was so important for the metal scene in Quebec?
Oh, for sure. We were influential and we influenced some of the bands that came out after us. At that time we had no idea what we were doing. But looking back, you can see the impact we had on the metal history of Quebec.
To be continued.
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