 FACEPULLER arrived on the punk rock, noisecore scene in March '91
with their first 7", Pull This, on their own True North label.
It received many accolades from press and radio-types across the planet.
The tracks from the now out of print Pull This 7" were included on their
first full-length, Cranial Expansion Device, released in 1992
on True North. In 1993
 FACEPULLER hooked up with Bang On Records and
their second brutal sonic offering, Auditory Surgical Technicians, was unleashed on the world.
Not counting the four compilations the band has contributed to
(On the Downside, Jungle, Wade-Free Vancouver & Wade-Free Wherever)
or the four snowboarding videos their songs have been included on
(the NO EVIL trilogy & Sha-Drack, Me-Shack, A-Bed-Nigo),
Unauthorized Volume Dealers marks their fourth release
(their 3rd full-length). Unauthorized Volume Dealers was
recorded and mixed by Ken "HiWatt" Marshall at Mushroom Studios
in Vancouver and showcases the bands powerful ability to mix controlled noise
with abrasive guitar strangulations. Released three months earlier in Canada,
it held steady at number 5 on Canada's National Chart.
 FACEPULLER came to Alternative Tentacles Records via Bang-On Records.
Unauthorized Volume Dealers is the first wide spread release
this band has had outside Canada. So cherish and revel in the flying shrapnel
guitar demolition that straddles the punk/metal/noise-core fence. There's
enough genre-mixing to satisfy metal-heads and punk rockers alike!
FACEPULLER's Brent, Ian and Brad have top-secret, covert jobs
that don't allow them to tour much outside of Canada, but there is a video
for "Bored With Beauty," directed/produced by Bill Morrison
(Skinny Puppy, GWAR).
FACEPULLER REVIEW
 FACEPULLER were worth every second of the wait.
These audio technicians play some of the best galloping noise-rock around,
complete with an authentically-crabby vocal style and volume, volume, VOLUME!
The guitarist is interesting to watch, looking like a pajama-clad
Trey Anastasio (of Phish) and playing with a composed, dare
I say "professional", abrasiveness, especially for noisy punk/metal.
Endearingly known as the city's loudest band,
they did justice to this rap by blowing holes through the
three-ply stuffed in my ears. The physicality of these guys
was incredible. Looking more like a crazed institutional screw
than the blue-suited pharmaceutical sales-rep that he is,
bassist/vocalist Brent sawed his way through a series of short,
savage songs. On an especially tasty offering, the guttural chant
"SEX, MONEY, DRUGS, GUNS," became a near poetic mantra.
The audience was not the only thing manipulated by
 FACEPULLER,
as changing broken bass strings mid-song became child's play
for a band that obviously reveled in the crowd's raucous appreciation.
FACEPULLER INTERVIEW
This interview was conducted before and after a practice at
 FACEPULLER’s
practice space in North Vancouver. It also must be mentioned that during this practice was the first
time this interviewer had ever felt the need for earplugs in his life.
ADDICT: o.k. let’s do some introductions here. Who are you and what is your function?
BRAD: I’m Puff Braddy. I play drums.
IAN: Ian... the guitar player.
BRENT: Bass and controlled yelling... and other things.
ADDICT: So, what have you been up to lately? I haven’t seen you guys around too much?
BRAD: Writing, recording.
BRENT: Readin’, 'ritin’, ‘rithmetic... the three r’s.
BRAD: Yeah, we’ve just sort of watched this Vancouver music scene, or just the lack of
places to play in town just go downhill steadily so we just figured ahh.... why fight it?
Let’s just kick back and concentrate on songwriting and lately we’ve been writing songs for
video games! So we’ve been studio hermits for the past while it’s been fun.
BRENT: Actually, the live venues that have been holding it down in this scene,
I really respect what they're doing. I think they do a really good job. There’s some
good places to play around town, but you can only play there so often if you live locally,
and you don’t really want to overplay.
ADDICT: Pretty easy to do in Vancouver.
BRAD: Especially when you only have 3 or 4 venues to choose from.
BRENT: For the ones that will have us play, anyway.
ADDICT: Yeah, what was it you said earlier about being banned from playing the Piccadilly?
BRAD: We’ve never played there but we’re banned.
BRENT: It’s actually kind of comical. It’s probably more folklore than anything.
BRAD: The sound guy’s scared of us.
BRENT: Which is really silly because there’s tons of bands that play there that are as
loud as us. I really don’t want to dis him at all, but he’s just doing what he thinks he
should be doing.
ADDICT: Is it volume concerns? Do you guys bring out a pretty rowdy crowd?
BRENT: No, not at all. The thing about it is that there were bands like
Black flag where you would go to see these bands with this huge amazing wall of
sound and you could almost not be able to stand being in the place, yet it had this
enormity about it. Pretty special you know? There’s electricity. We’ve got a song called
‘In Praise of Electricity’ which extols the virtue of being able to harness
this amazing substance and turn it into this sound pressure.
ADDICT: Ian, tell us how this whole video game thing came to be.
IAN: Well, we got involved in that through our friend Ken Marshall
(aka Hiwatt, recorded Skinny Puppy, etc. ), who recorded all of our previous
albums, then he quit doing bands all together and started working at Electronic Arts
as a producer and got us involved in it. So we’ve gone in a few times and got to use the
facilities.
ADDICT: Ken Marshall built that studio?
BRAD: Well, he was in charge of building it. He basically had carte blanche to build it.
Like, whatever needed to be done, do it!, therefore it’s just got the best of everything
in there. It’s a total world-class facility that no-one knows anything about.
ADDICT: So it was a good experience for you guys?
BRAD: They call it the empire. I think we were the first band to go in there and
totally rip it up whereas before they were mainly doing computer re-mixing and all that...
just sounds and what-not. But it’s a full on 72 track digital recording facility with all
the bells and whistles.
BRENT: I lost count... too many lights. (laughs)
ADDICT: So they wanted you to do the full-on
 FACEPULLER, heavy and hard.
BRENT: We just got asked to come in and do our thing because, a lot of the soundtracks
that they are looking for for some of these games are fairly, well, I like the word ‘harsh’
you know? They want some pretty heavy music to accompany some of these games and it just so
happened that some of these people who work there now have sort of followed us over the years
or known about us, and just said "who could we give a call to do this?" and our name would come
up.
BRAD: Especially seeing that Electronic Arts’
forte is sports games, so when you get
to the more aggressive/physical games, they lend themselves to a heavier soundtrack.
ADDICT: They call them adrenaline games?
BRAD: Yeah like extreme sports, wrestling all that kind of thing. And, you know, our
sound basically lends itself to that, especially with the first game we were on Rock the Rink,
which is all about extreme hockey, albeit hockey violence with the emphasis on fighting and
whatnot.
BRENT: There are no penalties!
BRAD: Even though it’s all cartoonish based, it’s our sound lends itself to that kind of
thing. What we do is tailor made to what they do and it’s a very cool symbiotic thing that we
got going on with them now.
ADDICT: So Electronic Arts
owns those songs now? Or how does that work?
BRENT: No! The songs are ours.
ADDICT: So you could release them on an album?
BRENT: Yeah, it’s called a non-exclusive licensing thing. So they license the song for a
particular application, but you are free to do whatever else you wish with that song.
BRAD: We still retain the copyright.
ADDICT: So, I suppose you guys got paid fairly well, it’s a big money operation. I’m not
asking for a figure or anything but, do you guys have day jobs?
All: Yeah.
ADDICT: Anything interesting? Or just jobs?
BRENT: Ian, you got a great job.
IAN: Yeah, I work for Larrivee guitar company. I play all the guitars and make sure that
they work. Tune ‘em up and stuff.
BRENT: He makes sure all the electronics in these acoustics guitars work properly. (laughs)
IAN: Everyone hates me there because there’s 3 who can play them out of 150 people.
BRENT: That’s a totally cool job where you get to be last dude in line to make sure this
thing works properly. These are high-end guitars. You might as well put in a nice plug for
Larrivee guitars huh? Vancouver-based, killer electrics, killer basses, world renowned acoustic
guitars. Good on John Larrivee and his whole organization.
ADDICT: You were telling me earlier something about Jello Biafra?
BRENT: Well, actually we are on
 Alternative Tentacles, we released something on that
label as well. World-wide distribution and that album is available very nicely worldwide right
now. Easy to get, good price, you’re proud of something like that. You hear that it’s getting
ripped off, bootlegged and stuff like that and you’re really excited about that because more
people hear what’s going on.
IAN: You say it’s at a reasonable price? Where can I purchase this? (all laugh)
BRENT: $99.99 tape or cassette! hmmm... tape OR cassette? (all laugh)
ADDICT: You guys are big In Europe. You guys ever tour there?
BRENT: No, this is where legend is bigger than life. We’ve had friends of ours going out
on tour with other bands and fully stickering Europe, right? So, all of a sudden you’ve got
band stickers everywhere in Europe and everyone thinks you’ve been there. It’s an exercise
in phenomenology, you can create something that isn’t there. We just haven’t been invited or
worked out a really adequately organised tour over there. It’s really hard to get thing like
that happening.
ADDICT: Yeah, and work a day job as well.
BRENT: Well, see, the thing about being a working musician is, we’ve had this discussion
many times: how precious is your music to you? Do you want to do it or do you have to? And a
recent interview that we all read was with Trent Reznor was very much along the lines of people
like Greg Ginn and people like Steve Albini. So it’s like, do the music purely for the sake of
it, being an artistic thing that you do. Forget about anything or anybody else, ‘cause that
really doesn’t matter. And now, music is talked about in units, so to me, that is something
I’m hoping to really avoid having to talk about my music in terms of units.
BRAD: And I think right now the music business is in such a decrepit state. I mean right
now, when record companies are run by the accountants of other companies that own the record
labels.
ADDICT: Yeah, I think Seagram’s owns all the large labels.
BRAD: I mean, right now rock ’n’ roll is just lost as far as that goes, I guess the
accountants don’t want to know about it.
BRENT: We’ve joked about how some bands are liquor whores. It’s pretty harsh, but
that’s what it boils down to.
BRAD: Well, even when you play a club your being a beer salesman.
BRENT: You are, and that’s the thing you got to get over.
ADDICT: Corporate unit pusher or something.
IAN: We got a corporation pushing us.
BRENT: This is true. We’re turning it around. I’ll give a quote (pause while he thinks of
one while being heckled) the first step in being a true revolutionary is not to get caught and
I think that’s Abby Hoffman but I’m not positive.
BRENT: So Addict, let me ask you a question.
ADDICT: OK
BRENT: What would be 2 words that sum up your experience tonight?
ADDICT: 2 words?
BRENT: 2 words only.
ADDICT: Umm... although it probably gets done to death, I think ‘LOUD’ would have to be one
to be of them. Actually if I only get 2 words, then I’ll use ‘LOUD’ twice.
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