Interview: Canyon

Recently, DutchMetalManiac’s Tim van Velthuysen interviewed Canyon’s vocalist/bass player Alex Duin.

Hey, how are you?

Hey whatsup beautiful people of The Netherlands?! We are pretty well here in Melbourne thank you, just coming out of summer still being careful with the virus and everything but generally things are starting to relax a bit.

Can you tell us something about the history of Canyon?

Our debut EP is something that’s been in the works for over 3 years now… We’d started playing together when we all met at work, we’d jammed a few times and then started writing a few basic songs. We hadn’t really set any direction for us to work towards, it sort of happened naturally. As we started writing the ideas just flowed. Most songs came out of huge jam sessions that were sometimes hours long. Alex always had the ZOOM running so we have a lot of music recorded from the really early days!

It took a few years to get the songs finalised. But when we were finally happy with them we took them down to Nic at Home Brewed Studios. He was a massive help for us. He was a constant professional who always had huge amounts of patience. Always had suggestions for the songs and was just generally fucking awesome to work with. Nic mixed the EP and was kind enough to entertain our input during this process as well.

We had it all mastered with Forrester Savell who’s worked with some of our absolute favorite bands (Karnivool and Animals As Leaders) for example.

We got it all recorded and finally mastered, then there was about a year long break where we just practiced our asses off and found the AMAZING art of Nate Hill.

Nate was also insanely helpful. Supplying us with artwork that WAY surpassed our expectations and really helped us visualise a more interesting way to release our music. Not only supplying music, but a whole concept visually as well.

Now we’re finally able to release it all and we couldn’t be more excited!
Our EP Static is out May 21!

For people not knowing Canyon (yet), how would you describe your music yourself?

We are a grungey stoner metal trio from Melbourne. We like to throw in some prog, punk and pop elements too and are really enjoying writing our own kind of heavy music. Heavily influenced by A Perfect Circle, COG, Shihad, Rage Against The Machine, The Ocean Collective, Karnivool, Porcupine Tree, TOOL, Alice in Chains, Kyuss, System of A Down, The Spice Girls, Incubus, Leprous, Muse, Soundgarden, RHCP, Tesseract, Meshuggah, Prince, Pendulum and Pink Floyd in somewhat equal measures. 

When someone doesn’t know Canyon yet and you can choose one of your songs to present yourself, which song would that be?

I think we would all show off different songs at this point, but for me (Alex) I would show Static the title track from our EP. I think it showcases what the band is capable of and is a cool song too. But I hope people would take the 26 mins and dive into the whole EP and decide for themselves!

What makes Canyon unique?

Well, everyone IS unique and no other bands out there have us 3 in them so that’s a start! We also are an Aussie band with one Kiwi member (Alex), we were all working together as guitar makers at one time!

Any future plans you can already tell us something about?

Just chipping away at writing songs for the next recordings really. We will have a video out to support Static as well which we are really excited to show off. It’s made by our friends at Small Robot Studios and is a digitally animated video. 

Any upcoming gigs for Canyon? Maybe coming to The Netherlands?

Holy shit, we would love to play all round The Netherlands! I think you guys have a great love for hard rock too? So that would be awesome… 
We can still dream right? Who knows what will happen with travel over the next few years?

How do you think your life would be without music?

Lifeless.

What advice would you give to young and starting bands?

Write lots/ together and practice to a click individually.

Thanks for your answers! Is there anything you want to say to DutchMetalManiac’s readers?

Dank je wel! Thanks so much for taking time out of your life to read about and (hopefully) enjoy listening to our tunes!
Cheers – CANYON

Alex Duin – Vocals/ Bass
David Collopy – Drums
Dalton Courtney – Guitars

Canyon Official Website
Canyon Facebook
Canyon Instagram
Canyon Bandcamp