Alexisonfire matures with Crisis

By Kelsey Whipple

Published Oct. 23, 2007

If you take a tour bus, fill it with five sometimes shirtless, always rowdy Canadians with "Yeti" tattoos and proceed to let them Jell-O wrestle on occasion, you've got a typical day in the life of Alexisonfire — a post-hardcore screamo band that loves Justin Timberlake ("awesome"), hates hippies ("Jafaikans") and could go either way on Americans ("painful"). But in a band named after the world's only lactating contortionist stripper, none of it really matters.

Lead screamer George Pettit doesn't pick his battles, and he doesn't mince his words. For the five guys in Alexisonfire (pronounced Alexis on fire, not Alex is on fire), Pettit said the band's beginning meant cutting ties to former bands, all of which combusted in one way or another more than five years ago.

"When we started, music wasn't fucking lucrative and on television," Pettit said. "It was in people's halls and basements. The times have just kind of changed with us, but now there's a lot more capitalist back-scratching."

It's back-scratching again when he talks about the band's recent nomination for "Group of the Year" at the 2007 Juno Awards, an honor many in his band's situation (a screamo one) will never encounter.

"As long as I'm screaming and Dallas (Green, co-vocalist) is singing, we're always going to be lumped in with it (screamo), when we really don't even listen to it," Pettit said. "If you really want to get down to it, it's just a way to tell your friends what we sound like. I don't care what they're calling us, as long as they call us something."

The band's latest album, Crisis, marks a more mature Alexisonfire, although the onboard antics haven't stopped. While he spoke, Pettit stopped to laugh as the bus belonging to their tour partners, Norma Jean, scraped against a wall.

"I think we've definitely spent a lot more time on the road, doing this for six years now," Pettit said. "That first album, we were teenagers. But now we've spent time on tour with a lot of legitimate, really good bands, and we've learned from them."

Pettit, a Tears for Fears fan with "Yeti" tattooed on his toes, takes his fans more seriously than he takes himself. Although their numbers are increasing, fans with Alexisonfire tattoos are guaranteed free entry to gigs if they send pictures of their tats to the band's publicist.

At 25 years old, Pettit already seems to have a love/hate relationship with the world. And when it comes to Americans, hell hath no fury like this Canadian scorned.

"For every one city that I really love in America, there are 10 more that are just painful," Pettit said. "And the whole scene here is just so trying as a musician — it's absolutely capitalistic. Sometimes it makes you want to stop making music."

His is a home, after all, that houses Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, Simple Plan, Nickelback and Three Days Grace.

"I know, but everywhere else I go (outside the US), there seems to be a glimmer of hope," Pettit said. "Everyone here is waiting for the next Nirvana, and I can goddamn guarantee you that there have been at least 50 of them. When people are bored of the fucking mass-produced music, phony garbage, boy band shit, maybe things will change."

So there's no hope for Americans, but is there hope for a reunion with the band's namesake?

"It would be pretty awkward to talk to her (Alexis Fire)," Pettit said. "I don't know, she probably hangs out with a bunch of shady people, all porn and pimps. I mean, you can have sex with her for money. So no."