CREDIT: PROVIDED BY ACT OF CHAOS
MIA's 2017 Band of The Year Act of Chaos, shares insight with the Interrobang on their formation and debut album

The recent break out Metal band Act of Chaos has already had a huge impact on the local music scene in the short time that they've been around. The group is comprised entirely of Fanshawe Music Industry Arts (MIA) students and alumni. It features Spinny Guilbault on lead vocals; Dhaval “Sunny” Lakhia and Jamie Stiller on guitar and backing vocals, Matt Gagne on bass and keyboard and James Wiseman on drums. Guilbault and Gagne shared the story of how the band and their album debut Morose World came to be.

This group first came together in 2015 as part of MIA's performance class, going through a small line-up change at the end of their first semester to form what is now known as Act of Chaos. However, the band didn't fully start playing shows and committing to writing music for an album until the first semester of their second year.

Tracking for Morose World was done in the Music Industry Art's recording facilities in November of last year. The band produced and engineered the majority of the sessions themselves, receiving some assistance from MIA alumus Adam Courts in recording drums and mixing the album. It was later mastered by MIA professor Rob Nation. The songs on the album were composed musically first, by various members of the bands, with Guilbault adding lyrics once the instrumentals had been solidified. “Me, Sunny and Jamie will all write songs separately on our own time, then present it and at that point, everyone else can throw in their production ideas…that's why our songs are a little bit different from one another,” Gagne shares. This has worked in the bands favour as it allowed them to create an album where each song is a unique entity that keeps the listener interested the whole way through.

With the changing instrumental styles, Gagne shares that, “Spinny's vocals keep it all [consistent] enough so it's the same band.” Guibault prefers to wait until the music is complete before attaching lyrics to it, stating that, “I wait until the song is completely done because if they change it, it messes up the flow of the lyrics.” However, the ideas and concepts for the songs begin long before the music is finished. “Usually while the song's being written I think of lyrical themes,” Guibault said, “I try to pull from my memory my favourite words and throw them in there to keep it fun and relate back to the theme of the song.”

This high attention to the words used is important to Guibault when writing as he does not want to waste any space on unnecessary lyrics. “I try not to swear…because a lot of it's filler words,” he said, “it just feels like you threw that word in there because you couldn't think of a better word. I really like to make poetry with it.” This poetic approach to writing, is perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the album and allows Act of Chaos to stand out from other groups in their genre.

Thematic elements of Guibault's writing includes political and environmental themes. A great example of this can be heard on the song Demoralize, which explores the subject matter of hope in tragic times, from the perspective of a Syrian refugee.

A highlight of the bands career was the EP release show they played for Morose World. “It was the most insane thing I've ever seen,” Spinny said, remembering that over 100 friends and fans came out to support the band and their music.

Morose World has been very well received by the general public already. The most notable recognition they've gotten so far was winning the Music Industry Arts Band of The Year award in early 2017. Included in this award was $1000 towards studio time at EMAC recording studios. The band plans to put this money towards recording a full-length album of brand new music. In order to keep fans satisfied until that time, Act of Chaos is almost finished recording a new single to be released in the near future.

More info on Act of Chaos can be found on their Facebook page at facebook.com/actofchaos. Their debut album Morose World can be heard at actofchaos.bandcamp.com or major streaming sites like Spotify and Apple Music.