For the longest time, Alexisonfire was heavy music’s hardest-working band. And then all of a sudden, they weren’t. In the summer of 2012, the weight of touring, family dynamics and the burgeoning, albeit unexpected, success of side projects had pushed the Canadian hardcore luminaries to breaking point. For the five members, Alexisonfire had all become too much.
“We had this commonality when we were 17 in that this is what we want the band to sound like and we’re all into this type of stuff,” guitarist/vocalist Wade MacNeil explains. “Life just went in a million different directions and it’s like there was none of that at all anymore.”
For an act that helped define an era of auditory chaos, the decision to step away felt like a rare silence. There had been no public outburst, no violent on-stage brawl; just a band that was here one day and gone the next. In a very real sense, Alexisonfire felt like the musical equivalent of ‘right person, wrong time’. Even as the lights dimmed on the band’s final show, the question lingered: Was this really the end?
Catharsis would come, but not until 2022. A decade after they first called it quits, Alexisonfire unexpectedly dropped Otherness, their first full-length album since 2009’s Old Crows / Young Cardinals. It was worth the wait.
“I think it’s the one record I’ve made where I felt very aware during the process of making it that something special was happening,” MacNeil tells me. “I’m very proud of all the Alexisonfire records, but when we were recording Crisis, we were just making a record. We weren’t like, “This is going to change our lives.” Which it did, but I was like, “All right, I finished my guitar parts. Let’s go to the beer store.” We were just making a record and once we finished the record, we went on tour.”
“Making Otherness though really, really felt special. Where we did it, we did it at a studio that’s very remote and out in the country, and so we were just there living together, just living in the record. And just, I don’t know, just going until we felt like that was it for the day or we really had what we needed.”
Fans agreed. The band’s fifth studio album exploded onto the charts, debuting at number 4 on the Canadian Billboard, and number 3 on the UK Independent rankings, even going on to win the Juno Award for Rock Album of the Year. For MacNeil, who co-founded the band in Ontario in 2001 when he was still in high school, the response was “beyond his wildest dreams”.
“It just felt like no other Alexis record has ever felt. I think if it had just been that and we were proud of it, that would’ve been cool and I would’ve been stoked. But the record was so well received by our fans that it was kind of beyond my wildest dreams. We play Sans Soleil live, and it’s like the loudest singalong out of all of our songs.”
“That doesn’t happen after a band doesn’t make a record for a long time. It’s just very unique. It’s very special, and so we’re all very, very thankful.”
Alexisonfire, for the most part, was always a success story in search of an ending. After breaking through with a stellar debut self-titled album in 2001, the St. Catharines post-hardcore act followed it up with the breakout smash Watch Out! A 42-minute explosion of sonic carnage delivered over 11 irrepressible tracks, the album would make an instant impact on the global heavy music scene, propelling the then-teenagers to a new tier. So began a decade of brutal touring that MacNeil can scarcely believe he survived.
“I’m mostly shocked. The more time goes by, I’m just like, “What? What was happening?” It makes less and less sense to me every year. I know I was there and I know I wrote those guitar parts and we did those tours, but it blows my mind that we went on tour for the first six years of the band. We probably played more than 300 shows a year.”
“We were sleeping on people’s floors every night. We were driving in the van all day every night, sleeping in a Walmart parking lot if we couldn’t find a place to play. Getting paid a hundred bucks or less to play the show, and at no point did anyone ever say, “What the fuck are we doing?” We’re all just like, “This is the best!”. That seems so strange to me now.”
“I really felt lucky that I was doing it; I was happy and it was awesome. But I look back on it and I’m like, “That’s crazy. That’s insane.”
“A 17-year-old touring America? I remember I bought brass knuckles at a gas station once. I was like, “I better get this money ’cause I got to settle the shows”. So I got these brass knuckles. Looking back, I’m like “What? What was I going to do? I’m going to hit an adult man to get paid 75 bucks? In Scranton, Pennsylvania? That’s the way I was thinking, and that’s how you get to be a band for 24 years, that type of… Whatever that is.”
Nowadays, Alexisonfire is a different beast. The foundations are the same—the lineup has remained largely unchanged for the entirety of their 24-year run—but the personalities have shifted. In a sense, they had to.
For most bands, a hiatus period marks the beginning of the end, and by all accounts, Alexisonfire should have followed suit. When the five-piece broke up, each member went their own separate way—Green released five albums with his solo endeavour City and Colour, MacNeil went on tour with British punk stalwarts Gallows, vocalist George Pettit became a firefighter, bassist Chris Steele travelled the world and drummer Jordan Hastings joined countrymen Billy Talent.
With so many projects pulling them in so many different directions, the band looked all but done, however, like a pair of jolted ex-lovers, Alexisonfire couldn’t stay away. They would reform sporadically for one-off shows over the next few years, announcing the most unofficial of official reunions in 2015.
As MacNeil reveals, however, when Alexisonfire eventually found themselves in the same room, it wasn’t as though nothing had changed. In reality, everything had changed, and that was exactly what they needed.
“The dynamic has really changed in the band—two of us used to be super wasted all the time when we were playing. Now, two of those guys are sober and two different guys are super wasted all the time. So it’s ever-evolving,” he jokes. “But I think the time away it’s like everyone went away, but we did a million other things. I think we brought that back to the band, and I think we’re just still focused on being a better band. It’s such a buzzkill when you see a band phoning it in.”
“It’s really important to me to be good. None of us would be doing it if we were just phoning it in. What would be the point? What would be the point of playing at this point and fucking it up?”
“There’s no commonality about anything in any of our lives anymore, except for the band. We’re five incredibly different people that seem like they should probably be in five different bands, but somehow it works and I think that’s what Alexis is.”
A touring musician from the age of 17, MacNeil has never known any other way. The larger-than-life character carries the weight of expectation in a hulking frame, cutting an imposing figure on stage, whether it be as Alexisonfire’s guitar virtuoso or the chaotic frontman of hyper-punk outfit Gallows. Off-stage, however, the 40-year-old Canadian hardcore legend is as warm-hearted as they come. As he reveals, the story of Alexisonfire is not one of a band picking themselves up from the tattered ashes of a failed campaign. It’s a love story almost 25 years in the making.
“It’s so funny. It’s so funny that it’s still happening. It’s just astounding no one’s dead.”
“We really care for each other. When it’s really connecting, we’re really tight and we’re playing together, I feel like there’s this other element to it where you just realise that we do really love each other and we do really love this band. I feel like people can tell, and I feel like that translates in a way that you can’t fake.”
“We got through the other side of it and we’re still buddies. It’s nice. It’s a beautiful thing. We’re very lucky. We’ve been there for the worst parts of our lives and these highs and we’ve experienced more of life together than with anybody else.”
Now, the band that first became a household name with tracks such as ‘Pulmonary Archery’ and ‘.44 Caliber Love Letter’ is returning to Australia, and they are bringing a few old friends along for the ride. The upcoming Australian tour, which kicks off in Perth on March 6, sees Alexisonfire tackle some of the nation’s biggest venues with U.S. heavyweights Underoath in tow.
It’s the first time the hardcore acts have performed alongside each other in Australia since 2008, when they shared the stage for the now-defunct Soundwave Festival. As MacNeil explains, the two bands have a history that dates back almost as long as Alexisonfire itself.
“I looked it up and we actually did a tour with them 20 years ago. That’s the last proper tour we did together,” MacNeil says. “We did Canada and the States with them and The Used, so it’s cool that we can be doing this and know that it’s not flogging a dead horse.”
“It’s very exciting. We’ve been to Australia a lot, but we’ve never really… It’s always just kind of been us. So to be able to roll over with another band from North America and go into the next level with bigger rooms, that should be sick.”
For MacNeil, the tour feels more like a homecoming than a global voyage. Over the last two decades, the guitarist has travelled Down Under more times than he can recall, playing shows not only with Alexisonfire but also under the Black Lungs moniker, as frontman of Gallows and on any number of personal trips.
Somewhat of a punk rock scholar, MacNeil credits the nation’s incredible, if not deeply underappreciated, backlog of hardcore acts for introducing him to the genre. So when I invariably mention The Saints’ classic (I’m) Stranded, it brings a wry smile to his face.
MacNeil, alongside band member Dallas Green, famously performed an acoustic rendition of the 1977 hit for Triple J’s Like Version. Raspy and gravel-toned, MacNeil’s lead vocal performance captured the rough around edges ethos that The Saints were known for, whilst still playing up to Alexisonfire fans. A somewhat unexpected choice, the cover was, in MacNeil’s eyes, a love letter to Australian punk. Not everyone agreed.
“I laugh because I remember the label being like, “Oh, we sent it to them (The Saints) and we got a response. They were like ‘Oh, that’s shit’.”
“But I love that record. I don’t know, especially getting to come to Australia; George and I especially are big Australian punk fans and there’s just so much cool shit that came out of Australia in the ‘70s. I love those Saints records and we were really stoked on that. I’m glad you like it. The Saints didn’t like it.”
It’s remarkable to think that an act 24 years into the journey is making some of the best music of its career, but Alexisonfire isn’t your typical hardcore band. In fact, they’re anything but. Vocal and unashamed about their adoration for one another, the band is open and honest about the challenges of being a touring act and the importance of staying mindful.
In reality, the turmoil of the past hasn’t left them fractured but rather encouraged the band to find a balance. Each moving part is as necessary as the next, and while individually, they’ve found success, the whole will always be greater than the sum of its parts. As MacNeil so aptly divulges, Alexisonfire is a band that exists not because they have to, but because they really fucking want to. If that ain’t love, I don’t know what is.
The upcoming Alexisonfire Australian tour kicks off in Perth on 6 March 2025. Across four shows in March 2024, the chart-topping five-piece alternative act will perform songs from an enduring catalogue spanning more than twenty years and five hugely successful studio albums. Joining the Canadian hardcore luminaries will be U.S. heavyweights Underoath, who will perform their seminal 2004 album They’re Only Chasing Safety in full, and New Jersey punks GEL. The tickets are being sold through the Frontier Touring website, with Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Melbourne shows available through both Ticketek and Ticketmaster.
