The Cola Heads Release New Album, Bottoms Up Via Cursed Blessings Records
Toronto’s pop-punk killers The Cola Heads have unveiled their album, Bottoms Up on Toronto’s premiere punk rock imprint Cursed Blessings Records.
Listen to Bottoms Up below and learn more about The Cola Heads via our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
The Cola Heads were formed in 1996 by Jules Phillips and Liam Jaeger in the summer before they went into 7th grade. The two had been school friends since the 3rd grade, both sharing a love for skateboarding and high-energy, provocative bands like Dead Kennedys, Misfits, Suicidal Tendencies, Gob, d.b.s.
From the beginning, Liam and Julian collaborated very well – Julian has always been the primary songwriter, and Liam has always steered the arrangements and production side.
Tell us a bit about your most recent release.
We wrote the songs for “Bottoms Up” over a few years after our 2014 release “Die Young”. We had been playing some of the new songs at gigs over 2017-2019 and began recording at the end of 2019. The record was about 50% done when the pandemic hit, so Liam and Jules ended up finishing the record during lockdowns – Jules recorded all his vocals at home, and Liam finished lead guitars and mixed the record at their rehearsal studio.
Where do you tend to pull inspiration from when writing?
A: “Bottoms Up” channels our favourite punk and hardcore sounds from the 80s and 90s. There’s a heavy influence of East Bay Ray’s use of delay and reverb in creating the ‘psycho surf style’ guitar tone. We used mostly SM58s for mics and old preamps from the 70s. There are also a lot of analog synthesizer tones underneath most of the songs. Liam’s father David Jaeger is an original member of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble (formed in 1971), and let us use his arsenal of vintage synths including a 1981 Roland Jupiter 8. Although we recorded the album digitally, the final mixes were recorded on a Revox ‘reel-to-reel’ tape machine, to add tape saturation and ‘awesomeness’
Do you have any upcoming shows you’d like to tell us about?
Our next show is September 16 at Baby G in Toronto. We’re playing with Christian Turner and Chilldozer
What’s your goal for 2023?
Releasing “Bottoms Up” was a huge goal for us. We also put together a new live band consisting of Chloe Doucet on lead guitar and Kiefer Neufeld on Bass. Now we want to share Bottoms Up with the world!!