Propagandhi

Features > Timeline > Oct 2012

By Greg PrattAlthough Winnipeg punks Propagandhi have only released six full-length albums, they've had an incredibly storied and controversial career. Since forming in 1986, they've endured years of skinheads crashing their shows, with the band themselves self-sabotaging concerts with reckless crowd antagonizing and punk preachiness that either turned people away or made them love the band more. Since Propagandhi started, they've championed causes like animal rights and spoke out against sexism, racism, and government wrongdoings. They parted ways with a bassist who went on to form one of Canada's most popular indie bands ("I feel a lot about it," says John K. Samson about his time in Propagandhi, "and I never really bring it up"), publicly called out the owner of their ex-record label (on an album released by that very label), and released a split record with a classic Canadian metal band. That last one makes a lot of sense, really: Propagandhi have embraced metal more and more as the years have gone on, crafting a sound that is part hardcore punk, part thrash, and part classic crossover. With the release of their new album, Failed States, Propagandhi have yet again created a new sound, one that is miles away from their pop-punk roots, just like their live shows are miles away from the skinhead-laden, audience-baiting debate-fests they once were.

1986 to 1988
Propagandhi forms in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba by guitarist/vocalist Chris Hannah and drummer Jord Samolesky. Hannah comes up with the name. "I'd like to say it's Jord's fault, but it was mine," he says. "I was a teenager very much impressed by band names like Ludichrist, and I thought Propagandhi was as genius as that at the time. The entire world now understands that to be untrue." The band's lyrical approach is heavily political from the start, a result of the punk bands that the two had been discovering. "The activist side of punk music drew Chris and I in quite a bit," says Samolesky. "That was something that I thought was really interesting and fresh about music that I'd never been exposed to." For the first two years of the band's existence, it is just Hannah and Samolesky. "It was me and Jord until 1989 because we were outsiders in a true outsider scene back then," says Hannah. "The punk scene was so weird and crazy. You'd go to a show and there were just cartoon characters, true misfits, either toppled over in the stairway or scowling at you. There were no starter caps, no jocks. We were two young kids from fucking rural Manitoba trying to go to shows in the big city wearing hockey jackets and Venom pins and thinking we were fitting in. It took us three years to meet anybody who would even fucking talk to us."

1989
Scott Hopper joins the band on bass. "We were all still in high school," says Hopper, who also plays in a metal band called Crawl with Chris Hannah around this time (Hannah is also moonlighting in a grind/black metal band called Altars of Nocturnal Armageddon with two Crawl members; both bands release demo tapes). "I think we were jamming at my parents' place. I moved into my first apartment shortly after we got together, so we lost our jam space." The band attempts jamming at Jord's apartment on the University of Manitoba campus. "We jammed in the basement of his dorm room once," says Hopper, who currently plays in Ditchpig and co-runs a surf and paddleboard company. "It ended with campus security and nowhere to practice. It was the time of my life, if only I could remember it." The band take their time getting to the stage. "We never actually played live with him," says Hannah about Hopper. "He was trying to figure out our songs and they weren't very hard but he couldn't quite figure them out." They release the We Don't Get Paid, We Don't Get Laid, and Boy Are We Lazy demo.

1990
"Stinky" Mike Braumeister joins the band. He had played in a local skate rock band called Orange Juice but got "pushed out" of that band while he was sick; a friend suggested he try out for Propagandhi. "I didn't really think a whole lot of the band at the time, to be honest," says Braumeister, being interviewed for the first time about his stint in Propagandhi. "It seemed a step down from Orange Juice, and at the time it was. Propagandhi were completely unknown and hadn't even played a show yet, while Orange Juice had a bit of a following. Plus, the songs seemed really overwrought and far too earnest. All I wanted to do was meet girls and play really ripping hardcore punk rock in a band. I didn't give a fuck about Haile Selassie or veganism, or any other 'ism."

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