With just a bass, some pedals, and a drum kit between them, Zach “Zon” Hoffman and Eric “Ric” Lourenco have been making frantic, urgent instrumental rock in I Smell Blood for more than three years. Eschewing the lengthy, righteous epics their post-rock contemporaries typically favor, I Smell Blood is more at peace with the valleys and gutters between the peaks of triumphant glory those “bigger” sounding bands have typically preferred. Their sound is concerned with constant detonation—white-knuckled executions of hyperactive noise blasts, and tumbling knots of fuzz-rock. In live settings, it is music that begets sweaty, red-faced spectacles of physical endurance. No matter where the stage is, Hoffman and Lourenco leave it all on the floor, collapsing into puddles of their own sweat upon completion. “Most of the time I play, my hair’s in my face, so I can’t really see anything and it doesn’t really compute to me how many people are there or whatever stage we’re playing on,” bassist Zach Hoffman says. “I just kind of zone out a little bit. And we’re loud enough where most of the time you can’t even hear if people are there.” Audiences get so into it, drummer Eric Lourenco reports he’s seen listeners pretend to know the words. The irony, of course, is that I Smell Blood is a strictly instrumental undertaking, but the anecdote speaks to how their complicated, primal riffs are as anthemic and engrossing as any pop song.
Both passionate ambassadors of London, Ontario’s underground music scene; a community that thrives on a rich network of basem*nt shows, alternative bars, and good will, both Hoffman and Lourenco are heavily involved in projects around the city. Lourenco plays in another band called, WHOOP-Szo, and Hoffman plays in Serf Kanata while his house doubles as a frequent gig space and a recording studio to many of the bands from the Out of Sound Records stable. Despite this, the two have still found time to tour their high energy show extensively throughout Ontario, using each show as an opportunity to forge connections with new bands and artists. Their discography, which charts an impressive constellation of similar scenes throughout this side of Canada, can attest to that: in 2012 they released a split with the transiently Hamilton/Halifax/Montreal/Toronto-based band, Crosss and they recorded their 2013 split with Say Domino with Denholm Whale of Toronto-based projects Odonis Odonis and Mexican Slang. As far as future plans are concerned, Hoffman and Lourenco are bringing I Smell Blood to the Grickle Grass Festival in May and North By Northeast in June, and in addition to working towards recording a full-length, they’re mulling over plans for “a few other weird things.” But this month they’re hitting the road with WHOOP-Szo to re-release their 2014 EP, MANFACE on an extensive tour of Ontario and Montreal while also dropping a series of videos, the first being the seizure-flagged clip for “Wrong Man”, premiering below.
Noisey: How did I Smell Blood first come together?
Eric Lourenco: It’s kind of funny actually. When we started, some of the members from Zach’s other band, Serf Kanata started another band with some of the people from my band [Say Domino] at the time and they started playing at a local bar we were both at. I remember we were kind of in the crowd looking at each other like, “Hey, we should start our own band, too, but like let’s just make it us two.” Their band was kind of a joke, sort of, so we were like, “Let’s seriously do it,” and we just put it together. And then we were like, “Let’s start making actual songs”, and then friends of ours who we recorded with before were nice enough to let us do joint tapes with them. It’s good because there have been a lot of bands that have started within our friend group and within the city, so everyone was really helping facilitate us-recording-wise, booking, helping us get shows-and it just kind of all came together.
I hear there’s a pretty rich network of DIY venues and house concerts in London.
Zach Hoffman: I’ve noticed in the past year and a half or so, a lot of people have really stepped up their game and kind of come to the realization that it’s only going to be more productive and progressive to support each other and help each other out. When [Out of Sound Records founder Adam Sturgeon] lived here at the house, him and I started putting on a lot of house shows, and there’s been a few other people like our buddy Preston [Ell] who puts on a lot of hardcore shows [at his house, also known as Satan’s Cove]. But just in general there’s a growing house show scene and the community that participates are really keen on keeping that thing alive in addition to a few alternative venues that have opened up recently that are more than happy to help facilitate locals that are trying to do something special and make a little bit of cash. Again, just having made a lot of connections with other bands, it’s been nice that we have more options to get friends of ours-or even bands that have never played in London-pretty decent shows. It gives them the idea that London’s worth coming back to and it’s worth telling other people about, so that it’ll just further grow the scene and the rest of Ontario can get to know about us. I personally think that’s a huge thing because for a long time I noticed that a lot of London bands would just play here a lot and never really venture out into the greater toronto area.
Eric: There are a lot of DIY spaces that are opening up and that’s amazing, because all of the bars are shutting down. They’re all going down like flies. So the scene has become a system of alternative spaces which is good because you can do whatever you want with those shows. You can have whatever bands you want to play there, and people will show up because they want to see music. If we weren’t playing music we would want to facilitate a good venue or a good show for people because we are all about music first. So, we just wanna make sure that everyone can come out and see a good show, see good bands, and make sure everyone has a good time.
Although there are some alternative venues opening now, would you say that the university-focused spaces in London have become an obstacle for the music community?
Zach: Yeah it’s crazy, because a lot of us have been doing this consistently for four-plus years, and you still meet people that are at Western University or at Fanshawe College and they have no idea of what’s going on or what we’re doing because you can’t promote on campus. At Fanshawe you have to go through the student board and it’s even hard for them to promote. Fanshawe has this “new music, indie night” that they do every now and again, and they’ll get locals that won’t have necessarily ever played at Fanshawe, which is kind of cool and a step in the right direction. But Western, they rarely ever delve into the music scene and try to find bands that people are actually paying attention to and you don’t see them trying to make that effort to sort of expose the students to what’s actually happening in the city. Most of the people that go to Western go to the main clubs or bars or stuff like that.
Eric: [The clubs] have so much money in the university, right? So they promote the clubs to all the kids?
Zach: Like I said it’s definitely an obstacle because it’s such a large audience you want to be able to tap into, but it’s almost not even worth it if you have to go through all of this so-called bureaucratic sh*t to deal with the administrations at the schools. For instance, there’s this Grickle Grass Festival that Adam Sturgeon and Savannah Sewell put on at the Children’s Museum here once a year at the end of May. It’s totally inclusive and only open to families and children, although I think it would be perfect for something to promote at Western, but we don’t. And we don’t really see too many people from that scene come out to that kind of stuff. It’s a weird dynamic [between the schools and the local scene], but we’re starting to see results, we’re starting to see people who really care and are wanting to do something, so it’s definitely worth it. It’s not like in the past while there hasn’t been really any signs where it’s like, “Hey, you’re probably going to have to stop or call it quits sometime soon,” because it’s just too draining.
Eric: I’d rather just show up on campus and just play. Just roll up and stand on the hill and play.
Your discography is this really cool constellation that connects all these different scenes throughout this side of the country. I take it that’s not much of a coincidence.
Zach: Yeah, that’s the thing. Since that show that we played with Crosss and WTCHS, we’ve stayed in really close touch and become been pretty good friends with both of those bands. Andy and Jag from WTCHS are a bit older and they’ve been doing this for a while so when they see or meet somebody that they like they’re both really keen on helping out. For example when we first started, Jag was pretty keen on getting us to play Hamilton. He wanted us to do a release for Perdu, which is that little label that him and his buddy Matthew Junkin run, and we’ve been talking about it for a while and it’s now somewhat in the works. And we’ve also been talking to Andy for a long time about doing a Craft single and Crosss were awesome enough to do our release shows last year when we released the EP in London and Toronto.
What’s going on in this video for “Wrong Man”? Is it safe to watch?
Zach: Music videos are f*cking weird these days and you kind of have to really set yourself apart and be unique and I think Eric’s brother Steve has done a phenomenal job in doing that because the newest video he did for us is-
Eric: It scared me at one point.
Zach: Yeah, he had to put the warning at the beginning of the video because it could possibly induce seizures for some people, and I think that’s scary in a way. But I think that’s also awesome because you’re kind of bracing yourself for something that’s gonna be a little bit jarring and that’s going to leave a lasting impression. It’s gonna make you feel something that a normal music video wouldn’t. And the earlier video he did [for us] where it’s just his mouth and a bunch of weird sh*t going on, again, it’s super gross, but if it grosses you out then that’s better than a video with a bunch of people twerking or somebody playing in front of a green screen. It’s unique, it’s got its own style, and I think it fits with the aesthetic that we have as a band. It just gives people a different glimpse into how we are trying to present ourselves. So if we can do that and if we can do it in a weird, gross, twitchy sort of way, then that’s what we’ll do. Because for us, bands that have really stuck out have been the ones that have done things differently. It’s noodle scratching, it’s mind blowing, it’s something you can’t fully wrap your head around. So if we can do that in our own way, it’s definitely worth it and something that we’re stoked to do.
Catch I Smell Blood on tour with WHOOP-Szo this April:
April 8 – Peterborough @ The Spill April 9
Oshawa @ Wasted Space April 10
Montreal @ Poisson Noir April 11
Ottawa @ Pressed Cafe April 17
Windsor @ The Beer Exchange April 18
London @ 121 Studio April 22 –
Guelph @ 42 Kent St. (house) April 23 –
Toronto @ Johnny Jackson April 24 –
Brantford @ Station Cafe April 25 –
Sarnia @ Empty Fest*
*WHOOP-Szo only.
Tom Beedham is an arts and culture journalist living in Toronto. He’s on Twitter
