The swamp, gators and bugs the size of your beer can. Bonfires made with pallets and waking up in the mud, thankful your girlfriend took your glasses earlier on in the night.

Besides the gators, the northern prairie has more in common with the Louisianan coastal wetlands then you’d think.

But southern metal? Where does the influence to sow sweaty riffage with that flare and swagger of the south come from?

“Pantera,” Michael Fardoe, guitarist for Winnipeg’s Fame, said during a recent interview. “[They] were the first to bring that groove back to the heavy metal.”

“It is all about the groove,” drummer Ben Routledge quickly chimed in.

And groove they do. Rounded out by bassist Tim Halbert and vocalizer Nick Wiebe, Fame is presently on the road for two weeks promoting their self-released debut, Can’t Get Right.

These seven tracks, recorded last year at Private Ear with hardcore wunderkind producer John Paul Peters (or as the band calls him, “Genius”) almost remained for private ears only.

“We got majorly screwed over by a manager who is Lord Voldemort right now,” Routledge said.

“Yeah, ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,’” Wiebe added.

 

According to Fame, there was substantial misrepresentation in the manager’s ability to be honest and trustworthy. The details are fuzzy, but Halbert will say this:

“Imagine having to pay for this album twice.”

So we have a little hardship for our prairie heshers-cum-swamp dogs. This debut has got hardship all over it; face down in shit and ready to fight just about sums it up.

Its sound is huge and the riffs – the riffs roll and play like old Van Halen and perspire dirty like Black Oak Arkansas. Wiebe’s vocal performance is greasy like backwoods barbecue on the bayou.

According to the band, the songs they’ve been writing lately are more “rock,” moving away from the ubiquitous – and frankly, unimaginative – breakdown sessions that appear on five of the seven tracks on Can’t Get Right.

Meanwhile, songs like Hellcaholic and Swamp King keep the riffs snarled and tangled, skipping the easy temptation of max-out-the-mosh breakdowns.

Bands like Spitfire, Every Time I Die and Down are easy references for anyone unfamiliar with Fame. But don’t worry about comparisons – all you need to do is be sure to wreck your neck the next time you see this ambitious quartet.

Mastered by Alan Douches, whose final touch credits include Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan and Mastodon, the band hopes Can’t Get Right will be a calling card for larger labels.

“We want someone to spend some money on us for once,” Wiebe said with a laugh.

Published in Volume 64, Number 3 of The Uniter (September 17, 2009)