Billy Talent

Billy Talent singer Ben Kowalewicz has been front and centre in one of the greatest Canadian rock ‘n' roll success stories of the post-millennial era. But today, with the release of the long-lived Toronto quartet's third album looming large on the horizon and the final master of Billy Talent III still sitting in an unopened FedEx envelope delivered just hours before to his home, the normally hyperactive front man is betraying neither cockiness nor complacency as he reclines in the band's cramped east-side rehearsal space and candidly assesses what might await the group in the summer of 2009.

Go back and listen to the chorus of "Try Honesty, "the monster single that broke Billy Talent and its eponymous debut album wide to the tune of triple-platinum sales in Canada back in 2003, and you'll remind yourself instantly that this band had the chops on delivery to stick around much longer than the mall-ready "pop-punk" fetish with which it was in some quarters initially, mistakenly associated. Instant chart success can be a bitch, though, and it was only after Billy Talent demonstrated its lasting mettle in the wake of 2006's Billy Talent II with three more platinum sales awards, a sold-out show at Toronto's 20,000-seat Air Canada Centre and, most unexpectedly, a No. 1 debut in Germany to match the one already notched at home that most reasonable folks from these parts finally woke up to the fact that they'd been sleeping on a "real deal" in their midst.

Billy Talent is past all that, for the most part. Kowalewicz, guitarist Ian D'Sa, bassist Jon Gallant and drummer Aaron Solowoniuk have been slogging away together for more than 15 years now and, consequently, have nothing to prove from a "paying your dues" standpoint. It would be nice nonetheless if the scorching Billy Talent III decisively hammered home to both the fans and the doubters what a shit-hot, world-dominating hard-rock band has grown out of these four former Mississauga teenagers' shared high-school dreams of … well … growing into a shit-hot, world-dominating hard-rock band.

Now Billy Talent is fairly oozing good songs on Billy Talent III, and for the first time they've all made it to tape in pretty much the same form they'd be heard during one of the breathless live shows that initially, decisively established and have since cemented the band's name and reputation.

For this, some thanks are due – if Billy Talent can be permitted a bit of uncharacteristic name-dropping – to producer Brendan O'Brien, who found time amidst a heroically busy schedule that recently added Bruce Springsteen and AC/DC to a list of superstar credits begun with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots to come north to Toronto and man the boards for the BTIII sessions. His involvement with new BT album wound up further coaxing Billy Talent in the meatier, more deliberately paced and oh-so-slightly "classicist" riff-rock direction with which it was already flirting on the nascent tunes for Billy Talent III.

With the new album, Billy Talent has never sounded as dynamic and liquid and as definitively the product of 15 years' worth of dogged, sweaty, night-by-night toil as it does on Billy Talent III – check how limber the rhythm section rolls on the fond Police homage "Diamond On A Landmine" – and was, at O'Brien's urging, largely tracked for the first time while Billy Talent bashed it all out in the studio while playing together in the same room.

Mission accomplished. Billy Talent has never sounded more visceral, nor more alive than it does here. Nor more ready for the trans-continental rock-star close-up it's been threatening for a couple of records now. Heaven only knows we could use a few more hitmakers like these guys to remind us why we all cared about hits in the first place.

News feed

Billy Talent-haastattelu Ruisrockista - 12.7.2010
Billy Talent won two Much Music Awards - 23.6.2010
Check out "Diamond On A Landmine" music video - 23.6.2010
A new "behind the scenes"-video available! - 17.6.2010
Check out the new downloads! - 27.5.2010
Three more nominations for Much Music Awards! - 19.5.2010
Billy Talent takes home the Juno Award - 20.4.2010
Billy Talent to Sziget Festival! - 6.3.2010
Billy Talent Nominated for Four Juno Awards - 5.3.2010
Billy Talent to Ruisrock! - 3.3.2010

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