Toronto-based desert punk trio Black Budget are known for their energetic, aggressive sound and their explosive live performances. The band has just released the newest single, “Insanity,” so we caught up with Pedro, Barrett, & Creag to chat about the new music, the artists they’re currently listening to, and their craziest live shows.
From The Strait: Tell us about the new single, “Insanity”.
Pedro: Insanity is one of my favourites, especially to play live. It came together pretty quickly, the verse riff hit me one night and then the rest came together at band practice. The song went through a few versions, but the one we landed on is definitely the winner. Insanity is a soundtrack for when you’re losing your mind, packed with energy and chaos that best describes us and our live performance.
From The Strait: How would you describe your sound to anyone who hasn’t heard your music before?
Pedro: We’re a desert punk band (from the beautiful Toronto Deserts), that has roaring guitars, aggressive drums, and rib-crushing bass. We love fast and hard hitting punk songs that have melodies you can mosh to and sing along to.
From The Strait: What are some Canadian bands you’ve been listening to lately?
Barrett: Family Man, Nomeansno, Burner, Shrewd, Wine Lips
Creag: Cancer Bats, Deliluh, PUP, Sunlust, Dopamine Dream
From The Strait: What was the coolest (and/or weirdest… we like weird) live show you’ve ever played?
Black Budget: We’ve played many crazy shows, the first one that comes to mind is we played Collective Arts in Toronto, we brought our own fog machine and gave it to our friend Sota to control, I think it got stuck or something but it was spraying fog for like 30 seconds straight and the fire alarm went off. We didn’t notice because we thought it was part of the song as it was in the same key as our song Whistleblower. We didn’t notice till we watched footage from the show that it was the fire alarm and not our guitars acting up! I think one of the most unique ones we’ve played is at a Skatepark in Hamilton with our friends Wednesday Bender, there were people hanging poles and moshing/skateboarding while we were powering through the songs, it was pretty great. Hoping for some more like that!
From The Strait: If you could curate a festival (with you headlining, of course), who would you want on the bill and what would it be called?
Creag: We would play Wembley Stadium with Green Day and Queens of the Stone Age. And of course Nirvana and Soundgarden and Alice in Chains would be there. It would be called “The last show ever before reality collapses”.
Either that or we would invite our favourite local bands to play and party at something like the soon-to-be semi-bi-annual “Big Bernard’s Backyard Birthday BYOB BBQ Bash with Bands like Black Budget”.
Barrett: BBBBYOBBBQBWBLBB for short
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Check out “Insanity,” the new single from Black Budget!
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Follow Black Budget on Instagram & TikTok
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