Dawn Vally’s Journey: Naming Origins, Metal Brotherhood, and Surviving Brutal Canadian Festivals

0:04 Hi, you live done to censure? Wow for you your. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio, and I'm here with our next guest, also from our friendly neighbors to the north. So let's welcome to the show down Valley. How are you, Zachary? Oh, I'm not too bad. How are you doing? I'm doing great? So so I do have a question right off the bat, just to be funny, Okay, I never talk about band names.

0:47 Yeah in Canada, is that how you guys spell Valley? No, it's not so we actually purposely spell it wrong. It's easier to find on the internet. Yeah, I figured, you know. Yeah, that's why I'd never really bring up band names except stuff like that, because I find, man, oh my god, you guys have such a hard time coming up with band names nowadays because everything's pretty much taken. So you gotta do stuff like that or make the letter upside down or something. So our band name is actually in Toronto one of the main expressways. It's called the Don Valley Parkway. Nice okay, and it's what its spelled. D O N and then Valley the traditional way.

1:28 So we put Dawn to kind of make it more dark, and then took away the E from Valley to make it easier to find on the internet. Nice. Not only that, but I'll bet you you find people that either a don't know how to spell valley anyway, or B they want, you know, in the day and age we are, they want to troll you and say, you know, you're spelling valley rule. We get that all the time, you know what. I think that's good man, Fuck it, Like, let them do that anyway that they want to get notice and give you. You know, we either got. We either get told that we spelled it wrong or they spell it the traditional way on the posters.

2:11 Oh I could see that too. Yeah. We always we're always going to pot like venues and it's like they got the chalkboard in front of our name. We're like, don't erase. The e, should just like cross out the E. I did that once actually in where was it? I think it was in Gwelph, and I just like grabbed the chalk and xed out the E. I love it. That's so killer. Uh So, I gotta tell you something, you know. I listen to your music, man, and it's fucking brutal as hell, and that's that's a compliment. That's what we're going for and we want that. We want to give the heavy. Right, no doubt, And like I always like to clear the air when it comes to stuff like that because people listen to that and they think, oh, you're evil, Oh you're mean, you're this.

3:02 Honestly, if you just talk to people, a. Lot of our music is like we write it about just like personal experiences when it comes to like aspects of like, uh, this album, for instance, every song is written about a different time in my life where I was betrayed by somebody I trusted. Ah well, yeah, so it's a lot like a lot of albums about that. Yeah, right, because with with the way the world is today, you get a lot of material with if you're writing like. That, no doubt. But that's why I bring that up, Like, if you sit and talk to artists instead of just assuming from their music, you'll realize that they're just performing and that doesn't mean like usually most of the most brutal bands I know are the nicest teddy bears I've ever met.

3:47 Honestly, one of the nicest guys I've ever met in the industry is a guy that I go way back with. Actually it's the old drummer of Suffocation, Eric Murratti, one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. And it's like the guy plays absolutely brutal death battle and off the off stage, the guy's like one of the funniest guys ever. Yeah. And I find that most of death metal people are like the nicest guys. Yeah, and they're the ones that everybody's the most scared of. Yeah, right, which makes me laugh. Even recently when we played Loudest Hell Open Air and I got to hang out with U summoning the litch a bit, and same thing, like absolutely brutal music and the funniest guys off stage is always joking and carrying.

4:31 On, no doubt, no doubt. And so tell me about that festival, because I go on tour and I do coverage of music festivals all over the US, UK, Europe. I just got back from Vaking and blood Struck and Incarceration. We actually did the Metal Battle for Vakan this year and we were a provincial finalist. Oh well, yeah, let me give you some advice because I interview a lot of the metal to the masses and the Valking Battle band and when they give you advice, take it. Oh yeah, Almost every band I interviewed at those two festivals didn't make it. The first year they took the advice came back and won.

5:14 So honestly, we we took it as like a learning experience for us on the provincial final. The advice they gave us, we kind. Of put it into action right away and use that at loud as Hell and we got an amazing response at that one and Alternative Waves Music Fest nice. So how as loud as Hell is my point, I was getting that one I haven't done yet. It's amazing, Like Jeff Borrie out there is the guy that runs it and he's from Drumheller and amazing guy doing amazing things with the Canadian music scene. Like it's pro In my opinion, it's probably. The biggest metal festival going in Canada right now outside of like maybe Armstrong, but it's like right up there, like a top two festival. And it's just such a sense of community out there in Alberta. With wit set up, there's camping, there's just NonStop music and it almost doesn't even feel like you're playing a show. It just feels like you're hanging out with a bunch of friends, but it's like fifteen hundred friends that.

6:10 Are there, right right right. I love that. That's so cool, and that's what it's about. That's what metal's about. That's what music's about. We can escape the insanity of the world and just yeah. The metal crowd. It's I always laugh because like the metal crowd is. I swear I see more like anger and fistfights in a country show than I do a metal one. Is so funny that you said that, because I've been talking about this lately. So several years ago, I had two festivals I had to cover in one weekend. Yeah, obviously I couldn't be at both. So there was this girl that worked for me. She was a country girl, and I'm like, you gotta cover this festival, and she was scared because she had She told me, I've never even been to a rock concert in my life.

6:55 And yeah, well, let me dispel the myths for you. Okay, you go to these country shows with a bunch of rednecks drink in Jack Daniel's game into fistfight. So literally, you go to. A metal show and you'll meet the nicest people you ever met. Were one big family. You'll probably make a lot of new friends. You'll see that the marsh it ain't about hurting people. Yeah, up, like exactly. And she comes back after the weekend and she goes, oh my god, you were so right. I have all these new friends. Everybody was so nice, and I ta bag some dude, and now he's my boyfriend. And I have this new favorite band. I don't know if you know who. They are there called Bring Me the Horizon.

7:40 I'm like, oh god, that's literally my favorite vocalist of all time. I've actually got funny enough. I've gotta me and my girlfriend we have a son on the way, and we're actually naming him after all these sykes. Nice nice, and you know, I gotta tell you he's one. I think he's one of the best lyricists ever. In fact, incredible lyricist. Right. My favorite lyric of all time of every band I've ever listened to is I can't Drown my Demons They know how to Swim. Yeah, that is the fucking most brilliant shit ever. Man. Yeah, it's every time they put it in music. It's like I sit there and give it a hard listen.

8:21 It's like every single time. The guy's just got like at least one or two lines every album where it's just like wow. Right, Like he comes up with these lines, like like even. In the one that stood out for me a lot was on their second record, Suicide Season, and it was where what is it, Uh, we're all going to hell? We may as well go out in style. Death is a promise and your life is a fucking lie. Right, That's it was just like how do you call it? I even as a lyricist myself, I sit there and look at it. I'm just like, that's like a whole different level of its own compared to everybody else, Like you've got everybody else and then you've got all these sights at the top.

9:04 No doubt about it. And like some of his songs I so relate to, like can you feel my Heart? Forget that one line that most of that I relate to one million percent. Yeah, And and Throne is like my theme song. Like people that know me and I playing them in the chorus, they're like, oh, yeah, that's totally you because. They want a big one out of that era. That stands out to me is Sleepwalking. Yeah, Yeah, that's a good one. That one's always stood out to me hard. It's just like the emotion that he conveys and like his his vocal delivery is just like it conveys so much emotion that's perfect for the kind of lyrics that he. Writes, no doubt about it. And what a live show they do.

9:44 Yeah, it's like, uh, I saw it bring me to their eyes on a couple of months ago and incredible show. Yeah. Yeah, that's how I got unreal. That's how I got to know them actually because I saw them at festival in the States, first time I ever saw them years ago. Yeah, and I never even heard their. Music for whatever reason, and I was I instantly they went shot to my top five favorite bands, like from that life Oh. Usually They're really the band that made me fall like because I used to be really into the older kind of metal style like Lamb of God, Children of Boat and stuff like that. When I was in high school.

10:25 And then it was a friend of mine that actually ended up showing me their Count Your Blessings album and I think it was the song Black and Blue that was the first song I ever heard by them, and I was. Like, this is insane. And there was about a year later when they actually ended up putting out Suicide Season, it was like, this is the greatest band in the world. Right, and they're so versatile. Like a lot of people give Ali's shit for changing it up, and I say, bravo, you know, like it's not the same shit all the time. And he said in an interview, like why I want to write this same song over and over again. It's funny that. You say that, though, because he kind of silenced the critics this year when they put out that Dehumanized song.

11:07 Yeah, and everybody's like, I told you, he still. Has it exactly man like. So that's the way I look at it too, is like, Okay, you take a little break for a while because you're you're bored with the same stuff. Yeah, then it recharges you to come back with something brutal like that, you know. Yeah, like I was when that Dehumanized song came on came out. I think I listened to nothing but that song for like five days straight, right, and my friends like this is the all these pikes and bring Me the Horizon just put out the best metal song in the last fifteen. Years, And I knew that was coming. When Jordan was no longer in the band. Yeah, I think that was probably a big reason. It's like, okay, let's go back to our deathcore roots. Yeah, and the Jordan didn't fit in with that for sure.

12:03 Yeah, he was. He was very much a part of their going, the going towards the commercial sound for sure. Exactly, exactly, So tell us about your sound. Okay, So you got your new EP. And I was specifically watching Knee Kapper okay, and man, I just what brutality. I love it. Yeah, we had a lot of fun right in that one. It was mostly written by like, the instrumental was a lot of it was written by our bass player, Jeff. He's pretty much the brains behind a lot of the instrumental stuff. I'll throw in the odd thing here, like our guitarist Anton will throw in the odd thing. But Jeff is just a natural songwriter. It's and I always tell people in the in the Ontario music scene, I'm like, Jeff is criminally underrated as a songwriter. He gave me that song the instrumental to finish, like the demo instrumental, I guess, and I want to say February and I was glad, I like you laughed to him. I was like, Oh, I'm gonna have fun with this one, and he'd actually had the working title. I just like, we didn't have lyrics for it yet. He gave it the working title knee Capper, and he's like, yeah, name it whatever you want, but like that's just a working title. I was like, no, I'm going to try and do something different, and I want to write around the working title, right because I liked how catchy the name was, and I was like, it's one that like is gonna stand out on an album list, and I was like, I want to really

13:34 make that one like stand out as it is, so I want to write around the title. So that's when I came up with just like the one line and I built from there, which was in the hook knee Kpeper left a bleed in place, no forward, no escape, and that's just kind of like when I was like, okay again, I was writing it based on like a betrayal from an old friend of mine that just his He was always very flip floppy and track. You would agree to something and then when it's time to do the thing, he would back out, and it's and it ultimately ended up costing him a lot and so that's kind of when I based the song around, and I wanted to use that line knee kapper as like a way to convey that nice.

14:15 I love it, And I have a very important question. Why is it the best musicians come out of candidate? Is it because you got you're so freaking freezing that you just stay in and write killer music? All the wind, all those cold winters create the anger for the music, right. Right, I'm telling you listen, even not even in your area. But so I'm somebody that the cold doesn't bother me, except I did New Year's at Niagara Falls one time, and I've done New Year's Times Square in the freezing cold. Sitting out for like sixteen hours didn't bother me. Yeah, But and I'm the type I won't miss anything. I was married at the time, and my wife went into shock because a half an hour before midnight, I was like, I'm fucking done.

15:01 It's too cold. I can't yeah this anymore. And like she never saw me tap out like that, you know, but with that mist from the falls, and that's not even as north as you are, so I like I could, Yeah, we're being up there. Yeah, we're over off Lake Ontario. But if you get into like like mid like middle of Quebec out to like the east coast, those winters they'll end up through the winter, they'll end up getting like six seven feet of snow and then it's like minus forty five and like it's the gay gets wild out there, even out like Albertas and their winters get pretty rough too. Yeah. My friend, my good friend, she lives in Calgary. Okay, she keeps, why mey come there. I'm like, I'm not coming to that cold shit, man.

15:47 Yeah, It's it's funny because the winters out there are like really like super cold. But then the summers, like when we just did looud as hell out there and we got caught in like a wind, like a storm. Oh my god. We were playing and it was like eighty kilometer an hour winds and like done like like sand tornadoes going and we're playing. You know that puts a whole new meaning to festival dust. Oh yeah, yeah, it was. It was brutal as I think when we got back to Ontario, I was like coughing up dust and even the rest of the band was like I'm blowing my nose and it's like half. Sand right, And I do a lot of festivals and I always wonder about that, especially to singers, how you guys performed, because like I was properly from the past month, you know.

16:39 I think I might have drank like a case of water, and like the on the day that we played, I have to have killed like a whole case of water. Right, And then like I use this stuff. I found it in the UK. I don't know if you have it there, but they definitely don't have it in the US Vocal Zone. Have you heard of it? No, I haven't, Okay, so all theers use it. This shit is badass like it and it does taste bad, but it's like I gave it to one of the people at one of the US festivals because they were really dying from the festival dust. Yeah, and I'm like, here, take this, and she was like at first like oh my god, this is disgusting.

17:21 I can't believe you. Maybe, and then afterwards she's like, oh my god, it actually works. This stuff is like I don't know it. I grabbed a whole bunch of packs every time I go there because there's nothing like it. And if you're like a singer, they swear by it over there, all the singers over there, and they swear what you know, it's it's just it's sugar free. It's a lozenge. It tastes like shit. But man, I just did like I was that bloodstock. They're having a drought for two months, so the festival dust was really bad. Made a mistake and go into a couple pits the first day, and I did like forty five interviews and so as the same with singing. As I'm talking, I'm breathing that shit in my throat and my voice was trash, and I was just in the morning pumping myself with those vocals. Those vocals owned and I was like, I was fine, you know, to do the interviews like that's like magic magic.

18:31 Yeah. So the new EP, uh tell us more about that? You know, well, why listeners check it out? It's probably the. Best most Like, we tried to go for a more high octane sound. We tried to we wanted to combine the sound that we had for the last two EPs to kind of give you like if somebody asks what is Don Valley? You show the miss EP to get everything that is Don Valley out of it, Like you're. Getting you're getting solos. You're getting like the two steps, the breakdowns, the big vocals, the hooks, everything about it. Nice. I love it and tell everybody how they can reach out to you guys on socials. Yeah, you're not only check out your stuff, but buy your merch because they can't listen to my show.

19:18 And let's say buy merch. Yeah we got we got a big cartel shop. If you go to our Instagram, we'll have like a beacons link there and you click on it and it's got like our Spotify, our Facebook, Instagram, our online merch store. We'll ship, not at the cost of the shipping, at the cost of the buyer. We will ship anywhere. Nice. Is there anything else you want to tell people about your band and things you got coming up that we haven't covered already. Just the same thing that we say on all of our socials. If you like what you hear, come see it live. Well, we guarantee you won't walk away upset. There you go. That's what it's about live music, and that's how I always found my most favorite bands is live. It is a whole different world than just listening to the music.

20:01 It really is. I mean, there's bands I didn't even like whend listen to our music till I saw them live. So one of the bands that I wasn't crazy on was Motionless and and then I saw them with the Horizon and it was insane. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's just a whole different others and. That band just completely won me over. There you go, that's the way it should be. Well, I think you'll win a lot of people over, so they definitely have to go catch you out live. And thanks a lot for giving us great music and thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man.

20:42 Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it a lot. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipeline. I'm w for CUI Radio.