Thousand Young

Thousand Young is a punk quartet from Welland that has been constantly gaining attention over the past couple of years. Despite several switches of personnel, the band's main songwriters Paul Costello and Corey Hamilton have been making music together for over a decade. Prior to Thousand Young, Costello and Hamilton wrote songs together with their band Soft Stories.

"Soft Stories was much more of a straight up rock driven band, while with Thousand Young we wanted to do something a little different," said Hamilton. "With all of our member changes, the sound has continued to evolve."

The other current members of Thousand Young are drummer Chris McKirdy and bassist Tony Nero. Their specific brand of rock draws from a plethora of styles, including grunge, post-punk and metalcore. This unique blend of sounds has become known as ‘grease-rock'.

"I have no idea what ‘grease-rock' is, but it's something we were labeled as and it seems to have stuck. Our influences range from post-hardcore and metal to indie and acoustic acts, so pin-pointing our influences is hard, but we try to draw from all elements of rock'n'roll and have as few boundaries as possible," said Hamilton. "To us it's all about writing what we enjoy and feel natural about, and hoping everyone enjoys it."

Thousand Young's debut full-length album was recorded at Tapes and Plates in Welland. The recording was done ‘live-off-the-floor' over a few days, with guitar over-dubs and vocals added at a later date. Although the band is excited about this record, they are also ready to move forward with making more music.

"It felt like we were just having another band practice, so I think it made the record sound very natural and smooth," said Hamilton. "I think we definitely surpassed how we thought the record would turn out, but looking at it now as we have progressed we all can't wait to get into the studio and do something bigger and better."

The launch party for Thousand Young's album release will be on Nov. 9 at The Rex Hotel in Welland. They will also be supported by California indie-rockers Open Hand. Since 1999, Open Hand has been greatly affecting the state of underground alt-rock and emo-core on an international scale.

In 2010, Open Hand recorded their third full-length album entitled Honey. Arguably their most diverse and mature release yet, Open Hand spent weeks perfecting their process before they decided upon their seventeen new songs.

"What made the creation of Honey a different experience was going to Matt Talbott's studio, Great Western Record Recorders in Illinois, and spending a few months there with him developing the songs," said Isham. "It was a really amazing time."

Open Hand and Thousand Young will be touring together across Ontario throughout November. Both bands plan to reach as many stops as possible before departing home to start working on new recordings.

"We plan on touring as much as possible and recording another album in early 2012," said Hamillton. "We are also planning on spending as much time in the US as possible, and potentially doing a cross-Canada tour through the summer."

Thousand Young's debut full-length, produced by Dan Romano, has already been released digitally by Blacktop Records. Physical copies have been pressed, and will be ready for sale in time for their tour starting next week.

"We could not be more stoked to be releasing this album with Blacktop Records, and we just hope everyone will come out and have a good time," said Hamilton. "Also, for those that have never witnessed Open Hand they are incredible and we are so excited to be heading on tour with them."

Thousand Young's album release show is Nov. 9 at The Rex Hotel in Welland, ON. $5 per person, restricted to ages 19+. - The Brock Press/Marshal Hignett

Rugged, angry stuff from this band from Thorold, Ontario. I like the rawness. This is the kind of band Steve Albini should record. - Alan Cross

There aren't enough twenty-first century bands who have a real bite. The guys in Canada's Thousand Young play aggressive loud shit and their music has an intense nasty BITE that is genuine and real. The songs on this self-titled album remind us a great deal of some of the more harsh intense underground rock bands treading around the United States in the late 1990s. These tunes are abrasive and rock like holy hell...but there's substance underneath the madness that prevents the music from ever regressing into a dull blur. These guys prove that they mean the stuff they play as is evidenced on cool rockers like "Hot and Heavy Brothal," "Sawmill Suicide," and "Stoned Parallel." Hot, hard, and HEAVY. - Babysue

Severed fingers and lineup changes have not deterred Welland’s Thousand Young.
With a year under their belts the four Welland musicians that form the band are set to release their debut self-titled album on Welland’s Blacktop Records and they plan to celebrate with a release party next Wednesday. Vocalist and guitarist Corey Hamilton explained that the band formed last April after he returned home from living in BC for two years and reunited with long-time writing mate Paul Costello who currently plays lead guitar.
“Paul and I have bee writing together for over a decade,” said Hamilton, who noted that the lead guitar duties were his before a workplace injury left him short an index finger.
“It has been a tedious last few months,” said Hamilton, explaining that he has slowly been picking up his guitar chops while taking over vocals from Costello.
“Since my accident we’ve been through an array of lineup changes,” he said, noting that a new bassist, Tony Nero, has joined the lineup alongside drummer Chris Woods.
Despite member change ups and missing digits the band has emerged from the past year with an album under their belt, recorded over the winter at Tapes and Plates in Welland.
“It’s edgy, loud rock and roll,” said Hamilton, pointing out the band draws from punk, hard core and indie influences for a sound that’s “straight up rock and roll.”
Hamilton explained much of the lyrical content focuses on life’s many changes, such as Hamilton’s return home from Vancouver.
“I left hating this place,” said Hamilton, recalling how he left Welland in 2008 for Vancouver with plans never to return. As time passed however he would realize that Welland is his home.
“This does feel like home, I’m stoked to be back doing what I love playing music with my best friends,” he said.
“It’s just a party album but there’s a lot of important stuff being said,” explained Blacktop owner Ben Andress, who decided to work with Thousand Young after first seeing them play at the 2010 YaFest concert in Welland.
“It was one of the most explosive set of the night,” said Andress.
To officially debut the new CD the four musicians will host a release party on Nov. 9 at the Rex Hotel. Doors open at 8 p.m. and the California-based Open Hand — also releasing an album on Blacktop — will join them for the occasion and on the tour to follow. Entry costs $5 or $12 with a Thousand Young or Open Hand CD. For entry and both CDs attendees will pay $20. - Niagara This Week/Steve Henschel

This is the type of music that you don’t have to turn up to 11 (Ah, Spinal Tap) to feel the full force of. Down and dirty is how Welland, Ontario band does it. A mixture of grunge rock and punk is how you can categorize it. They go full out, balls to the wall at all times. Even the ballads have some kick to them. Their self-titled debut has eight tracks and the titles of the songs give you an indication as to what you are in for. Songs like “Hot and Heavy Brotha!” and “Sawmill Suicide” are self-explanatory. Filled with raw anger it is not the type of CD that you will put on to get yourself to sleep. These are 20-somethings with energy and testosterone to burn. The foursome is made up of Corey Hamilton on vocals/guitar, Paul Costello on guitar, Chris McKirdy on drums, and Tony Nero on bass. - Orcasound/Kate

Alan Cross recently called Thousand Young “the kind of band Steve Albini should record,” and I can totally get where he’s coming from, because Thousand Young and I come from the same place. You want to talk about economic crisis, come take a drive down King Street, or Main Street, or any street in the heart of downtown Welland. It’s enough to make a band of angry young men put out an angry, young record as visceral as Thousand Young, eight loud, raw tracks that sting like a bandage ripped off a fresh wound. The emotion comes from frustration at the unrealized potential of what could be. It shows itself in the intense rawness of songs like “There Is No Shore” and “Not In Any Map”. Thousand Young aren’t loud for the sake of being loud, they’re just fighting to have their story heard. The Albini comment isn’t meant to be a slight against the work producer Ian Romano has done with the band. In fact, I think Albini would have approached these songs in much the same way, like an abstract expressionist throwing paint to the canvas and letting colours bleed and shapes form all on their own. You can’t envision what the finished product will be like, because the product creates itself.

Do I sound like I’m full of crap, right now? Or like a rambling fool who has about as much focus as an Occupy group?

I apologize if I seem to be going on about this, and I know, I know, you could make the same case for burgeoning music scenes the country (and world) over. I encourage everyone in those scenes to stand up and demand to be heard, too. I hope that every down-on-its-luck town gets their own version of Blacktop Records, the band’s hometown label, to be a vehicle for these young voices, and an advocate for art and creativity in the way they have been working at building the nurturing Welland’s growing music scene.

Thousand Young will be opening for Cancer Bats, who will be playing a Black Sabbath cover set at L3 Nightclub in St. Catharines on Sunday, December 18. Thousand Young, the self-titled debut album is available for download from Blacktop Records now. Much thanks and love to the good folk of Blacktop Records, who have furnished today’s goodies in the 25 Days of QBiM Contests running now at Quick Before It Melts’ Facebook Page. Head over there now to win yourself an impressive Blacktop Records prize pack consisting of a copy of Thousand Young, the latest CD from Blacktop artist Open Hand, and a pair of tickets to the Cancer Bats/Thousand Young show in St. Catharines on the 18th. - Quick Before It Melts/J. Di Gioia

Through their lyrics, musicians are able to describe many emotions, thoughts and feelings, whether bright and cheerful or dark and cryptic. Lyricism is a powerful form of expression and is quite literally poetry.

You’d never know it to hear Ethan Novak describe his band, Open Hand.

“If Jesus smoked cigars, the sound of his boot getting taken off and thrown through a glass window — that’s kind of what Open Hand sounds like,” says Novak, the California band’s drummer.

Open Hand toured southern Ontario with Blacktop Records labelmate Thousand Young in early November.

The bands had never met before the tour, but it didn’t take long for Novak to come up with an equally colourful description of Thousand Young’s sound.

“If you took Peter Gabriel,” Novak says, “and removed everything from it and rebuilt it – without Peter Gabriel – that’s what they sound like.”

Perhaps you’d like some more eye-opening descriptions of the bands? Corey Hamilton, Thousand Young’s singer, says Open Hand has “some stoner rock vibes,” while Thousand Young has become known as grease rock in the band’s hometown of Welland.

“If you listen to us, we sound very different,” Hamilton says, “but we fit well together.”

The central point of the tour was Nov. 9 at The Rex Hotel in Welland, when both Open Hand and Thousand Young officially released their new records.

Open Hand’s EP, The Mark of the Demon, and Thousand Young’s LP, Thousand Young, are now available digitally via Blacktop’s Bandcamp page (www.blacktoprecords.bandcamp.com) as well as on both CD and cassette tape.

Yes, you read that right.

“I feel like there’s not enough bands that are doing things to try to be different nowadays,” says Chris McKirdy, Thousand Young’s drummer.

Different is the name of the game for these two bands. Open Hand’s The Mark of the Demon, which follows 2010’s Honey, is just one song that clocks in at over 10 minutes long.

Novak says the EP is a good representation of the band and an introduction to working with Ben Andress, Blacktop’s promoter.

Andress says he’s wanted to bring Open Hand to Ontario for years.

“This is a band I grew up listening to in high school,” Andress says. “This whole tour just feels right.”

Hamilton says Thousand Young’s self-titled record has “been a long time coming.”

“It’s nice to finally be getting it out,” Hamilton says. “We’re excited about it and hoping to do a new one very soon.”

Another thing tying Open Hand and Thousand Young together is change. Hamilton notes Thousand Young recorded as a trio, but lots of changes over the past eight months led to the lineup shuffle that introduced McKirdy to the band.

Chief among them was an accident that cost Hamilton the index finger on his left hand, forcing him to relinquish his guitar duties and focus on singing.

“Everything’s been changing since then,” Hamilton says. “When this thing happened, Thousand Young pretty much broke up for a while.”

“I called Paul [Costello, who formed the band with Hamilton] and told him, ‘We’re playing this show next week and then it’s done.’”

Hamilton says he reconsidered a few days later.

“I can’t walk away from this,” Hamilton says. “This is what I want to do. This is what I love doing.”

Open Hand, formed in 1999, has been through its fair share of trials and tribulations, too.

Bass player Erik Valentine says the band has been on a hiatus for most of the year.

Before the release of last year’s Honey, Open Hand hadn’t put out new music since 2005’s You And Me.

The gap, says singer and guitar player Justin Isham, happened as the band went through personal upheavals.

“I still look at 2009 as the all-time worst year of my life,” Isham says. Hamilton can certainly sympathize.

“Every musician goes through periods where they don’t want to play anymore,” he says, but through it all, the love of music prevailed for both bands.

“Music saves,” McKirdy says.

Valentine says Hamilton helped put it in perspective at the first show of the tour.

“I thought he put it really well,” Valentine says. “He said, “I saw the smile on your guys’ faces after you were done playing. I can’t wait to have that.’”

Neither band plans to give that feeling up anytime soon. “Rock stars never die,” Novak says. - Niagara News/DAVE SCHWARTZ