Toronto’s Mil-Spec have never been a band content to stay in one lane, and their new self-titled EP on Lockin’ Out Records is the clearest evidence yet. Lean, melodic, and surprisingly danceable, the record pulls threads from late-‘80s UK Madchester and baggy alongside the band’s well-tuned hardcore instincts—resulting in one of the most refreshingly left-field releases of the year.
For this interview, I caught up with guitarists Dan Darrah and Matt Laforge, along with drummer Jacob Hellas, to dig into the making of the EP, the unexpected influences that seeped into the songwriting, and why they decided to rework a classic from Montreal legends Doughboys.
This new EP was surprise-dropped by Lockin' Out Records. What led you to go with that non-traditional rollout this time, and how does it reflect where Mil-Spec is right now?
(Jacob Hellas, drums): As the person who historically does none of the “rollout” type work, I am entirely media-illiterate, and aside from a few good music publications of which I am a reader (yours included), I have little good sense for what many expect when it comes to a rollout. I often find out about things well after they are released, or I am sent them directly by a friend.
To this end, the way that we put this album out felt quite natural for me. We worked extremely hard for a long time, writing the songs and getting them recorded, collaborating with Lockin’ Out on the manufacturing specs, iterating on and producing the music video, planning the record release show, which is happening this Saturday, November 22nd and has a lineup that we typically never get up here in Toronto, I guess what makes the rollout non-traditional is that all of these things were shown to the public at once.
Maybe it's a reflection of how I am not really tapped in to how things are done today, and maybe the rest of the band feels this way — I think that our lack of concern for expectations and focus instead on making sure that everything that came out on October 17th was of the highest quality we’re able to produce is a reflection of where we are right now as a band.
(Dan Darrah, guitar): We’ve basically always preferred the efficiency and excitement of just getting the music out. I much prefer the surprise over the drawn-out thing. Even that might be intellectualizing it too much. Actually I’m not sure why I’m answering this on behalf of the band. Matt will have more to say.
(Matt Laforge, guitar): I’ll speak only for myself and only about press/PR here, since I did have some thoughts about those things ahead of the release. We did a bit more PR alongside the previous two releases (Marathon and World House), and we probably benefited, at least marginally, from the modest amount of coverage we got as a result: We sold a few more copies in the first weeks and generated a bit more action on the streaming platforms than we would have without any press at all.
But in those prior instances I had a feeling, even as I was soliciting press, that chasing placements in pubs and on podcasts, etc. may be important if you’re in a career band that wants to max out and maintain its touring value and streaming revenue … but if you’re not that kind of band, if you’re a band like ours, which in reality is a hobby and sideline for all of us, maybe the means are misaligned with the ends, where promotion and press are concerned.
If the difference between a heavy-promo rollout and a say-nothing, no-warning drop is a few thousand monthly streams and a few dozen vinyl sales, then why not just chill and let the music — and the video, which we had a blast making — speak for itself? It would be a different story if we were trying to level up and scare up more touring business, but none of us has a life conducive to being in a heavily active band. Again, this doesn’t necessarily reflect what anyone else in the band thinks. This was my own personal calculation.
Sonically speaking, how would you say this EP is connected to or different from your previous records like Marathon and World House?
(Dan): The last two records were total guitarmaggedon, and on these songs we’ve dialed things back a bit. Simpler arrangements, fewer tracks, a bit more focus on the individual layers. Looking back, the Marathon session files were ridiculous. Every guitar track was probably tripled or quadrupled. I do still like how that record sounds, but I look at it the way Noel Gallagher looks at Be Here Now: It’s good, but we were off our heads. I’m glad we adjusted the approach.
The EP has Brandon [MacFarlane] on bass and Codey [Thompson] on guitar for the first time (I think?) on a Mil-Spec recording; I feel like their playing styles are really present, especially on “When the Music Ends 6.52.” (I’m going to refer to this as “Music Long” now, the original working title along with “When’s the Music Gonna End?”).
The other big difference from the last record to this one is the baggy influence, which we obviously didn’t try to disguise. We had a lot of fun making Music Long, just following one ridiculous idea with another, continually extending the thing. We’re used to speed and (usually) brevity, but it was cool to settle into a groove. The name came from a little warning message on the subway in Tokyo: “The doors will close when the melody ends,” or something like that, and a few of us thought that’d make a helluva lyric.
Jonah Falco (Fucked Up) mixed the record and really understood where we were coming from in that respect, and how to best incorporate the different sounds. We should also shout out Dylan Frankland, who engineered it. He was the image of patience throughout the whole process, save for one brief and understandable exception where I heard him mutter to no one, “Next time we’re doing pre-pros…”
We knocked the EP out pretty quickly, most of it being done over a long weekend in February that saw 35 cm of snow in total accumulation and many hapless cars stuck in the narrow alley outside the studio. The city formally declared it a “Major Snowstorm Condition and Significant Weather Event in Toronto.”
Actually about 15 minutes into the first day of recording Codey left in Jake’s car and was completely slowblind for, like, four hours round trip on a trek to buy the Hiwatt he used on the record. Also, Brandon, who works in snow removal, made many excruciating trips between Niagara Falls and Toronto; if he wasn’t recording he was shoveling and vice versa. We holed up and subsisted off Tims and Wild Turkey and pupusas and the sandwich from the cover.
(Jake): If we were to do a timeline of the canon of the band, the latest 12” sits as the successor to Changes, not Marathon. I think that the sound is a reflection of where we are and many of the conditions which led to the sound on this release echoed that of 2018, with some caveats, namely that we’re older, and our tastes have matured. The hardcore 7” is the perfect format for the genre, and sonically, this release, while a 12”, has a lot of the attributes of the ideal hardcore 7” to me, each of the songs have a clear place, there are no lulls in energy. you go everywhere only once.
To add to the conversation above about snow, that same day, we pushed a car owned by a lady who owned a boxing gym out of a mound of snow for her. In the process I lost my AirPods, and this affected forever, I think for the positive, how I listen to music. I find that since this event, listening to music how I was again, through a wire, is exactly how I was listening to music when we did Changes. Maybe this is why I’m retaining vastly greater amounts of information? It’s the audio equivalent to taking hand written notes rather than auto-transcribing your lectures.
To add also to what Dan said about the sandwich on the cover, we did eat the entire thing. It was our loaves and fishes. I picked it up from this Italian bakery called San Remo — they are the only place from Oshawa to Burlington which has the facilities capable of making a 6’ continuous ciabatta. Everywhere else does party subs by placing a bunch of 6” sandwiches side by side on a platter. It doesn’t quite have the magic.
I also had to leave the studio after Codey returned with the Hiwatt to go pick it up. The staff at San Remo are fantastic, they trudged with me through the snow to bring it to the car, and they were all really excited that what they made (which had a nice selection of fine white cheeses, cured meats and roasted vegetables) would be on the cover of an album.
(Dan): I agree that the EPs fit together. I hadn’t really realized it til now, but the demands of the format really do shape your thinking. It forces you to be a bit more precise, focused, economical; each moment has to earn its place. There’s definitely shades of 2018. Even Method of Doubt has a new record out…
(Matt): I love Marathon, but Dan is right: that was where we almost went over the waterfall. We wanted to make a more modest set of appeals on this EP. Funny thing to say about a record with a seven-minute song with a baggy jam in the middle. But I think attentive listeners catch my drift.
READ MORE: The Story of Strain: Canadian Hardcore, Here and Now, and the Loss of Jody Taylor
Speaking of Marathon, you worked with Ned Russin (Title Fight, Glitterer) on that record. Did you bring in any collaborators, or try out any new approaches, on the EP?
(Dan): On the cover of “Shine,” we brought in Jacob Duarte (Narrow Head, Skourge) who was in town for More Reality fest in April and joined us at the studio to knock it out. If you know Doughboys you know he’s got the perfect voice for the job. The night before there was an afterparty following the show that went into the wee hours, and I remember seeing Jacob do karaoke at a crazy decibel, having the time of his damn life, and thinking, “Fuck, I hope he’s still gonna be up for it tomorrow.” He killed it.
Our friend and longtime collaborator Emmett Morris (Wild Side, Demolition) played some licks on "The River," but the real heavy lifting he did was helping produce Music Long. If I recall correctly he also played the egg shaker and maybe some djembe? Anyway, Em is well-steeped in the references and helped us dial in the jam section of the song. He had great ideas, offered ample technical advice, gave me feedback on my slide guitar parts (“make it stink more”), and handled the wah-wah pedal for me because I have coordination issues. That was such a memorable session.
(Jake): I would like to add that I experimented on this release with many of the auxiliary instruments you may find in the arsenal of the house band at a dimly lit calypso cafe known for its delightful selection of caviar and cheeses on the dusty outer boulevards of San Fernando. I think most of it got buried in the mix but it’s there.
I was trying my best to channel acoustically, in addition to the maybe obvious Madchester sounds, some of what you might hear on a King Tubby, Culture, Yabby You, or even Skream b-side. The latter half of "When the Music Ends 6.52" is the first time I've ever played like that, and it had me running live videos of Reni like I was studying football tape.
(Dan): I remember sending a bounce to a friend who asked me if the congas were a joke. That’s when I knew we were on the right track.
I'm glad you mentioned "Shine" because when I first listened to the EP, I remember thinking to myself, "this sounds very familiar" and then looked at the title to see it was the Doughboys song!
(Jake): We first did this cover live in Montreal for the Madhouse festival in 2024. We didn’t tell anyone in advance it was something that we were going to do, and people were really excited by it, I’m not at all exaggerating, there were tears. At the time I was listening to a lot of the Doughboys and the Asexuals, had been talking with my uncle who was a major Doughboys fan in their heyday, and just came off of listening to John Kastner on Turned out a Punk, and the podcast that the guy from Less Than Jake does.
Since we did the cover live, I got deeply interested in Doughboys’ earlier work; they have a lot of instincts that their peers don’t, and I think it’s because they had the upbringing they did, coming up in the gritty '80s punk and hardcore scenes but building their musical chops to Van Halen. Canada is one of the few places I think where this could happen, we’re far enough removed from the action that you could be playing the music that the Asexuals played and not feel forced to put yourself in a box and thereby stifle your creative development.
I wish I could see them play live. Anyway, after having read and listened to so much about and by the Doughboys, I suppose I started to manufacture in my head some sort of peership between what we are doing and what they were and was so vain to think that they might care that we did the cover. I have this bad habit of cold emailing people I admire and seeing what happens, and to my defense, most of the time I'm lucky enough to get a positive response, but when I sent a link of the live recording of us playing the song in Montreal to John Kastner, I never heard back. I wonder if he’s heard the cover we recorded.
(Matt): Doughboys were foundational to Canadian kids of a certain age and disposition. Mil-Spec had to convince ourselves we were worthy of covering them. Or I did, anyway. In the early '90s, Doughboys were pushed as stars on MuchMusic — not really as much on radio but definitely on Much — so they were known quantities in the schoolyard, a big-deal band in Canada, not on par with Nirvana, but probably on par with, I don’t know, Collective Soul.
But, as Jake says, they were true blue punk rock in a way that came across subtly and subliminally, despite the sheen of pro production on their major label records and accompanying videos. A very evidently real band. Maniacal, fearless touring all over the world. A beloved if somewhat indefinable sound — a know-it-when-you-hear-it-sound — that they helped create, along with the Nils, the Asexuals, and the Cruz Records roster, among a few others. A huge jigsaw puzzle of influences that you could spend years piecing together. Just a special thing. Canadians are very proud of them.
In my last conversation with Dan, he said that “intuition and instinct take the wheel” rather than strictly defining a style that Mil-Spec adheres to. Do you think people put too much weight into trying to label what the band is or isn't (hardcore or emocore or whatever else)?
(Dan): I’m not in the business of telling people how to use their weight, but, yeah, it’s not something I think about much. What makes playing in bands interesting to me is the alchemy of personalities and how they get represented in the music.
I see Mil-Spec as a hardcore band that leaves cracks in the music for our varied interests and influences to come through. I think this is basically true of all bands, even the ones that may not realize they’re doing it, even the most intentionally programmatic worship band — the personalities are on display.
So, to your question, people can call us whatever they want. Actually, this is reminding me of a conversation that a few of us had after band practice…
(Jake): I recently devised a scoring system which is really stupid, but it tells you whether or not a band is hardcore. There are 10 hurdles, and if you satisfy 7 of them, you’re an hardcore band. It is available on the Total Supply message board and has been the subject of much debate.
Anyway, we score 9/10 on such system. I also generally have the view that hardcore is a term which encompasses aesthetic, energy, ideal and associations as much as it does music. You’re talking about a genre that is shared by Mushmouth and by Supertouch, by Day of Mourning and by Dag Nasty.
People do put a lot of energy into labeling us this or that thing, and people generally put a lot of energy into categorizing things. The problem with categorizing the real world outside of simple weights and measures and ones and zeroes is that the shades of grey will never fit nicely anywhere.
(Matt): When people pigeonhole us derisively or disparagingly, that is bad. When people pigeonhole us exaltingly, that is good.
What comes next for Mil-Spec now that the EP is out?
(Dan): As mentioned above, our record release is this Saturday the 22nd in Toronto at Lithuanian House, 1573 Bloor St. W., with Underdog, RZL DZL, Method of Doubt, One Track Mind, BFD, and Sold Short. We’ll hopefully have some more shows on the way soon. Get tickets at this link.
I’d also like to plug the video for "Music Long" that our friends Connor Hargreaves and David Foy made for us one weekend in October.
(Jake): More visits to the Banya. We really want to do another zine, I could see us doing that over the next 6-8 months, and Dan and I keep discussing the idea of putting some of our personal writing out under the banner of the band.
We are hoping to go to SE Asia next year, the Indonesian scene has for a long time been major supporters of ours and we’re due to pay them a visit and take part in their lovely cuisine.
(Matt): Please watch the video and come to the release show.
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The Mil-Spec EP is available on vinyl via Lockin' Out Records.
Tagged: mil-spec
