You’ve probably never heard of this band. You may have heard this song though. But only if you live in Canada, and especially in Calgary.
The Villains were a band that existed from the late 90s in Grande Prarie until around 2007 in Calgary. I worked with two of the members at my last job, and with their roadie and sound guy too. We called THAT guy the human forklift.
On this album, 2006’s “Annabelle”, there is actually a song called “Days of Gerk” about that guy. It’s kind of an inside joke, and I only know it from my time working with those lads, so I won’t bore you further.
I will however tell you that I bought 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 electronic drum kit, 1 synthesizer and 1 digital recorder from the bass player of that band. I still have all that stuff too, and as a matter of fact I played the classical guitar I got from him at work today.
And that’s probably also boring to you, so I’ll now talk about this band again. They went from a 4-piece to a 3 piece while I worked with half (and then one third) of them. They put out one album independently, which was very good. Then they put out “Annabelle” which is fucking brilliant. You can tell when I really like something because I call it “fucking brilliant”.
In any case, they won some national songwriting competition here in Canada and got this song “From the River” played on the local radio stations for a time. But the album didn’t really take off, and eventually the band split and ceased to exist.
Or did it?
Just doing some rudimentary searching, I was amazed to find any of their stuff on YouTube, amazeder to see that their MySpace page has been updated this very year, and amazedest to see that aparantly they’re re-forming with another member and calling themselves “WoRShiP WArShip”
Also, it looks like they’ve moved to Vancouver, which actually HAS a music scene.
So maybe more people will get to hear “Annabelle”. And maybe the new album by the reformed band will be good too. If you ever get a chance to hear some music by these guys, don’t pass it up.