Axes to grind
Electro Quarterstaff focuses on guitar noise on loud new album
Don Beat

“For me, this band is all about externalizing the internal. It’s like a type of mental architecture,” explains Electro Quarterstaff stun guitarist Drew Johnston, who also fires up bass in KEN Mode.

“A lot of these riffs, I write them in my head first like an internal dialogue. I hear my own song in my head and I externalize it,” he says.

The metal genre is almost totally based on clichés, but EQ has a brazen and unique style. They don’t have a vocalist and they don’t have a bassist. The three-guitar-based instrumental electro quartet features Johnston with rocket-blasting guitarists Josh Bedry and Andrew Dickens, along with ear-smashing kit kruncher Dan Ryckman from Under Pressure.

Their bursting sure-shot metallic riff riot debut album is called Gretzky. It’s on Willow Tip Records based in Pittsburgh, Pa., and Johnston says it should be available in stores on Oct. 24.

“It’s not really about Gretzky. I just like the way the word sounds, and it’s a good way for people to remember it,” he says.

Johnston is an enthusiastic music fan and an intense speaker with more flat-out titillating power than a coarse word puzzle.

“I’ve never smoked pot. I don’t have peanut butter in my mouth. I know how to talk. I think a lot of people speak in jargon today. They don’t clearly express themselves anymore,” he says with Electro eloquence.

Johnston is even an ace axe master, speared by a type of unsung band-shared attitude that’s garnering international attention from Streetbeatin’ metal music freaks. The stunning instrumental action that is EQ’s blistering metallic shock and robust tirade trade is making waves — especially because of instro spectaculars such as Twisted Squid, Neckwrecker, Eye Patch Romance, Titanium Overlords, The Right to Arm Bears and Something Awry in the Hetfield of Dreams.

“This band has always been about the riffs themselves,” Johnston says. “The harmony and the interplay, that’s what we’re doing, and the guitars kind of sing themselves.

“I think there’s enough going on with three guitar players playing zany stuff. I don’t think it’s going to add anything if we have an upper-middle-class guy screaming over it.”

Johnston says when it came down to waxing their voiceless E-krunch, Electro Quarterstaff knew exactly who to turn to.

“We recorded the album with Craig Boychuk,” he says. “He was really the only guy in town that I would trust with our material. He brought out the room sound while we were recording. It’s really rugged, and the album has a warmth to it that you don’t find with a lot of metal bands’ recordings.

“So many bands sound declawed, neutered and over-produced with quantized drums — Pro Tooled and over-manipulated. It sucks the life out of what you are recording. We tried to go with a more live, organic approach to the recording.”

He adds: “When we first started this band we were not really practising a lot. It was hard to get together. Now we’re practising a lot more, so there’s a lot more depth to the material than before, so we actually are interested in working with a bass player finally. Now we’d like to flirt with more low end. With the new stuff we do, I want to go further with different sounds.”

Experience the riff-heavy rawness of Electro Quarterstaff when it scores melts in your Streetbeatin’ brains at its Gretzky CD-release blitz with Putrescence, Prague and Velodrome on Oct. 13 at the Collective Cabaret. EQ will also play the Label Gallery at an all-ager with KEN Mode and Krull on Nov. 3.

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