"There aren't really any other hardcore bands from Sudbury," says Nico Taus, vocalist for the Big Nickel's punk rock rarity Vicious Cycle. "If you're from Toronto or New York or Boston, you have a whole history of music coming out of those cities. We take little bits of other scenes and make our own scene out of it." Along with Deranged Records label- and hometown-mates Statues, Vicious Cycle have set about cementing their own clear cut sonic identity with Pale Blue Dot, an ambitious full-length that melds Fugazi, Fucked Up, and northern isolation in a way only kids living in a mining town with nothing else to do can.
"The lack of things to do here really informed the new direction for the band, because we had so much downtime that we were able to look over material and really critique it from every angle," says Taus. "We rewrote the songs three or four times because we had so much free time." Recorded to digital eight-track by Toronto hardcore vet Jonah Falco (Fucked Up, Career Suicide), it took an outside voice to get the band thinking about the influence of their hometown. "When Jonah was recording us, he said, 'You guys really sound like a Sudbury band.' We didn't really know what he meant at first, but I think from the outside looking in, maybe Sudbury has its own sound. That's exciting, because I've never thought of it that way."
"The lack of things to do here really informed the new direction for the band, because we had so much downtime that we were able to look over material and really critique it from every angle," says Taus. "We rewrote the songs three or four times because we had so much free time." Recorded to digital eight-track by Toronto hardcore vet Jonah Falco (Fucked Up, Career Suicide), it took an outside voice to get the band thinking about the influence of their hometown. "When Jonah was recording us, he said, 'You guys really sound like a Sudbury band.' We didn't really know what he meant at first, but I think from the outside looking in, maybe Sudbury has its own sound. That's exciting, because I've never thought of it that way."
