Check out ELDER ABUSE (ex Daggermouth)

Elder Abuse blend 90s Epifat skate punk, modern pop punk and hardcore-influenced melodic vocals. Sounds sweet, right? It's pretty much skate punk played by better songwriters, or pop punk played by less socially awkward dudes. I've heard a few bands that seem to be doing variations of these influences and I’m hoping it becomes a thing. I also noticed that Elder Abuse had a few Irish bands listed in their influences, which confused the fuck out of me for a while.

Their drummer Dan, (ex – Daggermouth, in case you need another reason to check these guys out) filled me in on how the band started, the Irish connection and how their name isn’t a reference to beating up defenceless old people! Let’s start with a generic band biography.

Elder Abuse has dudes spanning from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, It's a little weird but its working for us right now. We play fast and catchy punk rock drawing influences from older skate punk bands like Lagwagon and NOFX up to newer pop punk bands. We all have a firm background in the hardcore scene, so that influence still rings true sometimes in some of our tunes. 

Dat name! What's up with it? Were all the other punk names taken, or is it a MILF thing?

The name haha… well I think we all kicked it around for a bit and weren't really to sure what to think of it, and eventually we decided we thought it was funny. Its sort of a playful shot at our parents more than anything, a few of us are getting on in age and its sort of a joke about how parents of people who have spent years in bands have had to put up with all kinds of painful shit that other parents will never have to experience haha. It definitely has nothing to do with the actual abuse of the geriatric, which we in absolutely no way condone haha. If people want to take it that way, then fuck em, they are just dinks that want to find something else to get offended by. 

Who's in the band and what bands have you all been in before?

The band consists of 5 dudes, sometimes we interchange some fill in guys..so it almost makes 6 dudes depending on the circumstances. I have played for quite a few bands in the past, probably the most notable past bands I played in Daggermouth, Withdrawal, Frustration - a bit of that Irish connection haha - and a few more, the other dudes mostly did roadie duties for Withdrawal, one of the dudes that helps us out plays in an awesome band from Saskatoon called Castaway, our guitarist played in a version of the California band Heart To Heart and our other guitarist played in sort of a crusty hardcore band from northern Manitoba called Good Things. 

How did Elder Abuse start?

The band started with my best friend from high school hitting me up to jam around, i'd put him off forever and finally had an opportunity to hang out and try out some tunes, It was slow going and we all thought it was just a big goof at first, the awful demos of our first material! I was so drunk I barely got through the material haha. But eventually as we were hanging out more and writing more we started to get into the shit that was coming together and decided to take a serious try at it and start touring and making shit happen.

Was there a set sound you were going for or did it happen organically? What I've heard so far seems pretty well conceived and put together.

We were definitely confused at first haha, we knew we were gonna stay in a punk rock area, but I think we all had some different ideas at first and then it sorta turned into a more gruff vocal styled pop punk. So yeah, I'd definitely say it sort of just organically came together as we all got comfortable with each other.

What's the Irish link in the band? I'm guessing Frustration and Bang Bros aren't universally known in the Canadian prairies?!

As far as the Irish connection, I met Nelly from Frustration when he was living in Van, we got to be pals and then as the years went on, I was finished with Withdrawal and never actually got the chance to tour overseas. Neal hit me up and said "You should come over and fuck with this tour we are doing with Cornered." So I ended up doing two UK and Mainland tours with Frustration playing drums, that shit was awesome. That's how i got familiar with Bang Bros and Nibiru and all the boys over there. 

What are the plans for releasing and touring?

As soon as Born to Lose is finally released we plan on pushing it, We have some western Canadian shows in the next couple months as well as our first stab at the Southern west coast coming up in November with our pals in Anchorless. We have some east coast plans for after Christmas but we are still working them out.

Listen to Elder Abuse here or be their 667th like on their bookface.