Montreal's BLACKGUARD, who are currently on tour with EVERGREY, SABATON, POWERGLOVE and THE ABSENCE, have checked in with the following update:

"Next few shows are Canadian dates! We do not hit Western Canada often, so make sure you catch us there!"

September

28 – Winnipeg, MB - The Osbourne Village Inn
29 – Regina, SK - Exchange
30 – Edmonton, ALB - Starlite Room

The band's complete tour schedule is as follows:

September

28 – Winnipeg, MB - The Osbourne Village Inn
29 – Regina, SK - Exchange
30 – Edmonton, ALB - Starlite Room

October

2 – Seattle, WA - El Corazon
3 – Vancouver, BC - The Venue
5 – San Francisco, CA - The Grand Ballroom at the Regency Center
6 – Hollywood, CA - The Key Club
7 – Tempe, AZ - The Clubhouse
8 – Salt Lake City, UT - The Complex
9 – Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater
11 – Houston, TX - Numbers
12 – Dallas, TX - Trees
13 – Austin, TX - Emo´s Alternative Lounging *
14 – San Antonio, CA - Backstage Live *
16 – Atlanta, GA - Masquerade *
17 – West Springfield, VA - Jaxx *

* without Evergrey

BW&BK; scribe Mitch Lafon caught up with Blackguard singer Paul "Ablaze" Zinay at this year's Heavy MTL festival, which took place in Montreal, Quebec on July 23rd and 24th. Check out the chat below:

The following is an excerpt from BW&BK;'s recent interview with Zinay about the band's new Firefight record:

Symptomatic of the constant roadwork is a growing number of disgruntled metalheads that would like to see Blackguard not come through town for a change. They’re one of the few small bands in recent memory with long term visibility, having secured some high profile tours over the last 24 months, and while Zinay understands the discontent he’s not about to apologize for having a career.

“Whenever a new tour gets announced and we’re on it, people take their potshots at us online, sure. I was on the BW&BK; site a couple months ago, actually – the EPICA tour had been announced, followed by the SYMPHONY X tour – and people were so pissed. It was like, ‘What the fuck are they doing on this tour again?’ I responded and said, ‘You know what? We’re going to tour until you hate us even more! We have three more that aren’t even announced yet!’ (laughs).”

It’s something of a miracle Blackguard found the time to do any writing for a new album, let alone record it, and cough up top quality songwriting at that. Entitled Firefight, the album surpasses Profugus Mortis on every level.

“There really wasn’t a lot of downtime where we could sit down and write,” Zinay reveals. “The writing for some of these songs happened after the HYPOCRISY tour (June 2010); we nailed down four songs – ‘Firefight’, ‘Cruel Hands’, ‘The Path’ and ‘Fear Of All Flesh’ - for a demo at that point. Those were the first songs that Victory Records heard when we were negotiating with them. We worked on the rest of the songs after that, but they were pretty much done on the road. Kim (Gosselin / guitars) brought a lot of his recording equipment with him – laptop, soundcards – so we built the songs as we were going. There was no time to stop. We had tour obligations and there was a date looming for when we had to have the record done. When we got back from the Epica tour there was a little mad rush for me to finish up some of the lyrics. I was back home December 20th, and January 2nd I was in the studio recording my vocals.”

Click here for the complete story.