If you haven’t heard of Suicide Star yet, don’t worry. It won’t be long before you start hearing more from one of Niagara’s newest bands who recently released their debut album Isolation along with their first single and video Mercy.
For the last year and a half, the members of Suicide Star wrote, recorded and released Isolation during the pandemic. Now that the album is out, the band is anxiously waiting for Ontario and borders to open up again so they can get out to play some shows at home and abroad.
We caught up with Suicide Star‘s vocalist Rob Barton who is excited to be back in a band after being on a hiatus for many years. Having very little to do with music since leaving the Niagara Region in 2003 to pursue a professional career, Barton, for the most part, stayed away from music with the exception of jumping on stage once in a while with friends and writing a few songs here and there.
Then about five years ago, Barton joined Milton, Ontario band Thread. The band wrote an album’s worth of songs which put the bug back into Barton to write and record. But then suddenly a family tragedy brought Barton back to Niagara.
“For the first year or so that I was back here I didn’t really want to do anything,” said Barton. “I think I picked up my guitar twice in that whole time. I hadn’t sung in any professional manner for years at that point. It was at least a year before things started to get better.”
Barton’s career picked up and he began dating a new girlfriend who bought him an electric drum kit for his birthday about a year later.
“I had been a drummer when I first started playing music and she knew I still loved to play. So once I felt I had got back some of my drumming chops I made a video of myself playing a cover song and threw it up on Facebook.”
It was that video that caught the attention of another veteran Niagara musician and Barton’s old high school friend and drummer Brian Hamilton (Step Echo, Storm Force). Hamilton, along with his former Step Echo bandmates Les Serran (guitars) and Aki Maris (bass), was putting together a new band and starting fresh in early 2020.
In their short time together, Step Echo had released two studio albums and gained considerable popularity in Canada and overseas. They opened for such major acts as Collective Soul and I Mother Earth. But when they disbanded in 2018 the three members felt they still had some music left in them to write.
All they needed now was a vocalist and that’s when Hamilton reached out to Barton after seeing his Facebook video. Hamilton knew Barton as a vocalist and, at this point, Barton was ready to join a band once again. The timing seemed right.
“One of my favourite places to be is on stage and I started to get the itch to do that again,” said Barton. “I actually thought I would try to join a band as a drummer, but I knew that singing was where I belonged. Unfortunately, there weren’t many bands in the area that were recording and looking for a singer so I was kind of stuck.”
Barton wasn’t stuck for long. Right from the start, all four band members clicked.
“From day one they’ve treated me with absolute respect and made me feel completely at home. To me, a huge part of the success – or lack of it – for any band, is ego. Because musicians are artists, usually the ego is a big part of the creation process and can cause some serious friction,” explained Barton. “With these three guys that hasn’t been an issue at all. Everyone listens to each other’s opinion openly and we all have our say. Brian is the guy who keeps us pointed in the same direction but we all get to decide where we’re going. It’s refreshing.”
But just as Suicide Star was getting started in early 2020, the world began to shut down a short time after they formed due to Covid-19. The world-wide pandemic halted many industries – including the music scene. According to Barton, there were very few challenges in recording the album during the pandemic. Each band member recorded individually in their own homes.
“Thanks to modern technology, there were surprisingly very few challenges in recording the album the way we did. These days it only takes a laptop, some good DAW software and a good internet connection. Not being in the same room together certainly removes a lot of the spontaneity and idea-sharing that might happen when recording together in the same space. On the other hand, it can make you feel a bit freer to explore your individual part without the pressure of everyone else staring at you through the studio glass! There’s also no ticking clock. I can have a great day vocally and belt out an entire song with full harmonies or I can have a terrible day where singing a few lines is almost painful. Recording this way gives us that luxury of walking away from it for a while if we have to and coming back to it whenever the mood strikes.
“But no matter what technology or software you have, in the end it really comes down to who’s doing the final mix. That can make or break a record. Brian took care of all of that on the album and did a fantastic job. He’s got a very keen ear when it comes to mixing.”
The final result of the band’s hard work is Isolation – a 10-track album. Most of the songs on the album are new with the exception of some riffs Serran had stored away – those riffs formed the basis for a couple of the songs on Isolation. Barton and Serran were the main songwriters on the album.
“Les would come up with the main riff or song idea and Brian would add a scratch drum track. It would then come to me and I would usually offer arrangement ideas like adding a new part here and there, maybe a chord change or two. Sometimes I might change the song key to fit my voice better,” explained Barton.
“After some back and forth between Les and I, it would then go to Brian and Aki to nail down the final drums and bass parts while I go off to write lyrics and melody. When they were done it would come back to me to add my final vocals and harmonies. After that Brian switches to engineering mode and works his magic.”
Barton describes the songs on Isolation as “a cross between heavy rock and pop-rock with lots of hard-hitting guitars.”
“There are songs you can both headbang and tap your foot to! We do have one slower song on the album called Eye of the Storm that could be considered a ballad but not in the hair band sense of the word. That song is really close to me and it deals with the pain of a personal loss.”
Mercy was chosen as the first release because it’s a song that resonates with the band musically and lyrically.
“We loved the tempo of that song and thought it strongly represented the type of music we were writing. Brian and Paul Rozon were the creative force behind that video and knew that Mercy was a great fit for it.”
Barton said he and the band can’t wait to go out and play live once things get back to some sort of normalcy.
“We haven’t discussed it at length just yet but I think we all agree that we’re a bit weary of doing the regular bar scene. We’re not getting any younger and doing three sets a night, tearing down and coming home at two-thirty or three in the morning just doesn’t appeal to us much anymore,” said Barton. “I think we’re going to be looking at getting some good opening slots or shows where we can showcase the record without having to do too many cover songs. We really want to promote this album so doing shows that focus on that is really what we’re after when it comes time to play live shows again.
“I’m just happy that I’m able to write and record with such a great group of guys! Our personalities gel really well and the songwriting happens naturally. The only regret is because of the pandemic we’ve only been able to spend a small amount of time actually in the same room together so I’m really looking forward to rehearsing these songs and just hanging out with the guys.”
You can connect with Suicide Star on all social media. Isolation is available on all music platforms or you can order a physical copy in CD format by emailing the band at suicidestarmusic@gmail.com.
Connect with Suicide Star online: Facebook Instagram YouTube
Isolation Track Listing:
1. I Survive
2. Mercy
3. Suicide Star
4. Eye of the Storm
5. 21 Guns
6. Follow
7. Love Me Like You Mean It
8. No Looking Back
9. Fractured
10. The Unknown
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
“The band wasn’t actually called Suicide Star when I first joined. That came later. The story is that at the time, we were really struggling to find a good band name. One weekend my girlfriend Lisa and I had gone to our friend’s trailer. We were sitting, having a few drinks around the fire and I was playing them some of the rough mixes of a couple of songs the band had just written. Our friend Rob then put in a tape of songs he had recorded with his former band and one, in particular, stood out. I thought the song was really cool and he told me the name of it was ‘Suicide Star’. It was like a bomb went off in my head. With Rob’s permission, I brought the name to Les, Aki and Brian and they loved it!”
– Rob Barton explaining where the name Suicide Star came from.
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