Home »
Punk’s not dead!
Legendary Hamilton, Ontario punk-rock power duo Artificial Dissemination hits the Cranbrook Hotel Pub!
By Ferdy Belland
“We played our first show back in July 2013,” says Shawna T. Heist, vocalist-guitarist of Hamilton, Ontario’s fabulous punk-rock power-duo Artificial Dissemination, who are including the Cranbrook Hotel Pub on Thursday, June 22 as the westernmost stop on their upcoming 10th Anniversary Robot Apocalypse Tour (with opening support from Castlegar’s kings of cool Toaster and Fernie’s queen of punk Anita Roloff).
“I used to play in a whole bunch of Toronto-based punk bands, since that’s where I’m from originally, but it’s been A.D. for me once I moved to the Hammer!”
“I played in Prom Children for twenty years before Shawna and I formed Artificial Dissemination,” says Jamie P. Roblem, A.D.’s powerhouse drummer. “I was briefly in the Resentments for a few years before this current band happened…but that was just a bunch of old punk guys who couldn’t get out of town! (laughs)”
Artificial Dissemination has spent the past decade combining the classic bedrock of old-school hardcore punk (Black Flag, Minor Threat, etc.) with influences from 1960s Garage Rock and instrumental Surf Rock into a hard-hitting and infectious sound all their own.
Teeth-rattling ditties, roaring about the sociopolitical injustices of the world (and ugly pickles, too) that rarely break the two-minute mark, so thankfully when they play three albums’ worth of tunes, they can kick out an, um, marathon set that’s maybe 35 minutes long. Certainly not for the faint of heart!
Shawna Heist and Jamie P. Roblem are not only bandmates, but soulmates too, bonded by their deep love not only of punk rock, but of each other. And their hometown suits their lifestyle just fine; the mighty rough-and-tumble Steeltown of Hamilton has been a stronghold of punk rock ever since the scene first exploded upon the world in the late 1970s, and over four decades later, the ‘Hammer’ (as it’s fondly nicknamed nationwide) is as thriving a Canadian cultural hotspot now as it ever was.
“The punk scene out here in the Hammer is pretty flourishing,” says Heist. “Even when I was still living in Toronto, I’d always be checking out shows in Hamilton… Jamie was always commuting back and forth to pick me up! (laughs) I’ve noticed there’s been a big upsurge in shows, recently. Before, everyone would freak out if there was more than one show happening every week, due to promotional competition and such. But now there can be four shows happening in the same week, and there’s more than enough people to go around so the shows seem to always have good attendance numbers.”
“There’s about five different venues just in Hamilton alone that do shows regularly,” says Roblem. “So every weekend there can be up to four or five punk and metal shows happening! Now that the pandemic’s finally over, everyone’s out and being social again. I hope they don’t get tired of it! It’s been really good over the last year. Hopefully the excitement keeps going.”
“There’s quite a few local Hamilton bands that I really like,” says Heist. “we’re hosting a double tenth-anniversary bash with System System at the end of July – both our bands played our very first show together at the same gig back in 2013, so it’s the right thing to do!”
“Dessicate is a great Hamilton band,” adds Roblem. “They’re a newer band – they sound like old-school Flipper, crossed with crazy heavy-metal guitars, and loud female vocals just screaming like crazy! They’re a LOT of fun.”
“There are so many active bands in Hamilton right now,” says Heist. “It’s quite surprising.”
“I’d written down a list of, like, fifteen Hamilton bands or something, since so many people ask me about the scene,” says Roblem. “But I lost the list! (laughs) They all seem to be playing pretty regularly around the Hammer or in Toronto or elsewhere. The classic local old-timers, like Teenage Head and the Forgotten Rebels, are still going strong and doing shows. They still play, and good on them!”
Both Heist and Roblem are eager to get rolling on Artificial Dissemination’s 10th Anniversary Robot Apocalypse Tour.
“Our first show on this tour kicks off in Thunder Bay,” says Heist. “The show is on a Friday, but we have to leave early in the morning on Tuesday and deadhead our way out there. But we’re doing it smart! We’re taking the ferry from Manitoulin Island across to the other mainland, so we don’t have to do that god-awful drive through Sudbury and whatnot. We enjoy doing that. Two to three days of eight-hour traveling times. We’ll be arriving early in Thunder Bay the day before, so we’re not ragged and road-worn for the show. Goodness knows we’ve done THAT enough times in a row, and hopefully the tour van smells better this time!
“We’ve got good gigs across the Prairies,” says Heist. “Winnipeg and Brandon and Saskatoon and Prince Albert. We tried hooking up a show in Moose Jaw with the punk band Johnny Twofinger, but that didn’t work out, so we landed a show instead in Palmer, of all places! In truth, we’ve played there before. Have gig – will travel! A show’s a show, and you often find far wilder and more excitable crowds in the small towns where they hardly ever see touring bands, regardless of what style of music they play.
“Once we get to Alberta, things get busier – we have two shows in Edmonton, a show in Calgary, another one in High River, one in Lethbridge…”
“We tried getting a show in Medicine Hat,” says Roblem, “but they’re hosting the big Alternate Waves Festival the week before, so the promoter we spoke with told us he already had way too many shows to deal with during the summer. Oh well, we’ve played there many times before with Western Death, but there’s always next year!”
“Our furthest west show on this tour is in Cranbrook!” says Roblem. “The tour takes us from Thunder Bay to Cranbrook and then back to Ontario. When we get back to Hamilton we’ll be playing a bunch of local shows over a couple of weeks and then we tour out east!”
“This is a very busy summer for us,” says Heist. “We’re actually booked all the way to end of October!”
“Our most recent full-length album was in the pressing plant just as the pandemic erupted,” says Heist.
“We had to delay the album release for obvious reasons,” says Roblem. “It was finally released during the middle of all the lockdowns, so we haven’t had a chance to tour for it before now. But we’ve been busy flogging it on BandCamp and at local gigs and all that. But now we’re looking forward to going across the country again to finally support the album. It’s high time!”
Artificial Dissemination remain hungry for the highway, and always look forward to dragging their high-speed ear-splitting angst-anthems anywhere and everywhere they possibly can.
“We play gigs all across Southern Ontario,” says Heist. “We play in Windsor every year. We have a show in London coming up. We played Waterloo last week. We play Guelph quite a bit.”
“We get around!” says Roblem. “There’s quite a lot of small cities to cycle through, and enthusiastic audiences everywhere we go. Over the past year, since the last of the pandemic restrictions were lifted, we’ve played pretty much everywhere across Ontario and Quebec. We always do weekend tours, all the time…Montreal, Sherbrooke, Quebec City. The only major place we haven’t played in a while is Ottawa – we need to get a show in Ottawa soon! And Kingston. And Belleville. So many places to squint at on a map!”
“Sometimes you can’t play them all,” laments Heist. “There’s just so many shows to be had around our neck of the woods. It’s better to have too many options than no options at all. We try not to play Hamilton too often.”
The punk rock experience has taken both Heist and Roblem to far-flung exotic locales they would have least expected to perform.
“Even though we live close to the American border, we don’t play in the States,” says Heist. “But back in 2017 we did play in Cuba!”
“We went there just for a vacation,” explains Roblem. “and then we ended up playing a couple of shows!”
“We played with a Cuban band called the Diptocks,” says Heist, “and they ended up coming to Canada the year after and we played with them again…in Saskatoon! There was a Canadian guy who sponsored the Diptocks to come up here at least two separate times, recording them at his studio, booking them gigs and such. It was a good friendship to make.”
And the good punk-loving folks of our fair Key City would do well to come out and support these hard-driving never-say-die road warriors.
“We’re very, very excited to be playing Cranbrook for the first time,” says Heist, “and we’re grateful to all the good people at the Cranbrook Hotel Pub for giving us a chance and allowing us to play an early-evening show on a school night, too! We’re just dying to meet all you guys, and the guys in Toaster, and Anita Roloff, Fernie’s Queen of Punk! It’s important to give people in small towns the nightlife opportunity on weeknights, just so everybody isn’t bored to death waiting for the weekends to show up again. I think it’s gonna be great!”
Artificial Dissemination hit the stage at the Cranbrook Hotel Pub (719 Baker Street) the evening of Thursday, June 22 as the westernmost stop on their 10th Anniversary Robot Apocalypse Tour, with opening support from Toaster (the Kings of Castlegar!) and Anita Roloff (Fernie’s Queen of Punk)!
Admission: $10 advance (tickets available at the Pub during regular business hours), $15 at the door, showtime 7 p.m.
Please visit www.facebook.com/ArtificialDissemination for all your Hamilton Punk needs. Thank You for Supporting Live Music in Our Community – See You There!
e-KNOW