DIEMONDS – Born To Be Wild

August 15, 2015, 8 years ago

Aaron Small

feature heavy metal diemonds

DIEMONDS – Born To Be Wild

“This fucking dude, man, he started taking a lot of liberties. Originally, he was just a guy that came to our shows. But before you know it, he had somehow got my phone number and email address,” says Diemonds vocalist Priya Panda about the inspiration behind “Better Off Dead”, which appears on the band’s new album, Never Wanna Die.
 
“He would call me ‘til my phone would die, like 80 times. It got to the point where I thought; maybe I should call the police? But I didn’t want to piss him off more, because it was almost at that point where he was delusional. He would leave messages saying he saw me here, he saw me there. He actually knew that I work at Bovine Sex Club – the best rock bar in Toronto – and he would be dropping by, leaving packages for my boss to give to me. It was just dirty shit! Not going to go into full details, but it was pretty gross stuff. He was encroaching on my personal space, fucking with my mind and my band. I write songs, I’m going to fucking write a song about this cause I’m so angry, I’ve got to get it out of my head. It’s pure rage.”
 

 
Never Wanna Die is available now in Japan via Spiritual Beast, and in Canada on eOne. Napalm Records will bestow the rest of the world with this sleaze rock gem come the first week of September. Serving as the follow-up to The Bad Pack, which was originally released independently in 2011, then reissued in 2012 via Underground Operations, Never Wanna Die was not an easy album to complete, as Priya attests to. “We played over 200 shows supporting The Bad Pack album over the last few years, trying to get it under people’s noses. Over the last little while, we got a grant from the Canadian government, which is something we’d been hoping and praying for. As an independent band, we were working day jobs just to pay for our record; and we never skimped on the recording process. We always spent as much as we could afford because that’s our piece of art, people take it home with them.”
 
“The live environment is where we thrive, but we were really blessed to get the government grant which helped us secure a producer for the first time ever in (Juno Award winner) Eric Ratz (Monster Truck). He mixed our last record actually. We really wanted to work with somebody in the big leagues, even though we were an independent band. He was one of the first people we looked at. He’s from East Toronto, he’s a basement metal head; he grew up in the era we really love. So it was a great opportunity for us. We really got into the songwriting process and got to spend a lot of time on our songs, and in the studio. That was a big change between the two albums.”
 
That being said, “In between the two albums, we had some pretty much catastrophic shit happen to us,” admits Priya. “It was really paralyzing for the band when we lost our original drummer, Al Riches, who played guitar on The Bad Pack album as well. Almost a year to the day later, we lost our bass player from The Bad Pack, Paul Mancuzo. It was super tough for us! So our new album is definitely dedicated to those two guys. And very recently, in April, we lost our first drummer ever, Vassil Mester. It’s been weird with a lot of our friends dying really young. But we’re dealing with it, and we play our songs for them every night.”
 

 
Who doesn’t love zombies? Diemonds clearly do as one of the undead graces the Never Wanna Die album cover. However, that isn’t the only link to the flesh-eaters as Priya sings ‘When hell is full the dead will walk the streets,’ in the song “Hell Is Full”. Much more than just a cool lyric, it was inspired by the classic George A. Romero movie Dawn Of The Dead, which features the famous quote, ‘When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.’ “You got it, exactly! It’s based on that premise. It seems like there’s always something going on, we’re teetering on the verge of a big change in the world, a big shift. Maybe it’s in the way of thinking, the way we’re going to have food and water, or access to shelter and money. We’ve all become so comfortable in the way we live our lives… if that shit was to happen, we’d all be fucked right over! That’s kind of what that song’s about too. We’re not prepared for a Mad Max kind of world, but maybe we should be.”
 
Diemonds has opened for some pretty big names thus far including: Lita Ford, Sebastian Bach, Slash, and Steel Panther to name but a few. Arguably the most impressive gig the band ever played was aboard the KISS Kruise in 2014. “It was crazy for us. It’s no secret that we’re huge KISS fans! Dekay and C.C. – our two guitar players – they both have KISS tattoos. It was huge for us to get selected to be on the cruise, especially by other KISS fans, that’s how we actually ended up making the cut; they had to vote us on. It meant a lot to be there… it was surreal. We got to play for KISS! It was super cool. I went into pure fan-mode. One day, (KISS manager) Doc McGhee sat me right behind Robin Zander (Cheap Trick) and Shannon Tweed, it was insane! And they were playing some rare cuts, songs from The Elder. They did an acoustic set outside on the pool deck during the daytime, it was so awesome. And for us, we got some awesome shows and got to hang out with some awesome fans.”


 



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