Canadian rockers Three Days Grace have released their fifth and latest album Human earlier in the year. This marks their first album without longtime vocalist Adam Gontier (replaced by Matt Walst), and their first lineup change in the band’s 12 year history.
“The first record came out in 2003. The other guys met when they were kids in Grade 9. I think they were all playing together. It’s probably around 1994 when they originally hooked up with each other. In 1997, they became a band,” explained guitarist Barry Stock, about the band’s history. Stock joined the band in 2003 as the band’s lead guitarist during the release of their debut self titled album.
While the band has scored multiple platinum status albums over the years, they have never let their past success affect how they approach their present status.
“We don’t take anything for granted,” he said, about what they went through over the past couple of years. “We’re all kind of workaholics and work really hard at what we do. We love what we do. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I don’t know what else we would do.”
“We’re always thrilled that we’re still relevant and people still love what we do. We hear from people all the time [about] how we’ve changed their lives and made things better through our lyrics. That’s really important to us. Just like I said, we don’t over think it but we keep working really hard at songwriting and we do the best we could do. We’re going to carry on as long as the fans gonna accept it.”
At the time of the interview, the band had just completed a run of dates in South America. Stock talked about the experience and reaching new fans.
“We’re in New York City tonight, but we just got back from South America the other night. It was our first little tour on this record. We hadn’t been to Argentina. We went there and it was amazing. Originally we were like the record’s not out…should we play the new ones or play the singles? Once we got there, we thought let’s just play half a dozen new songs. So we did that. So far in South America, we played six new songs in the set. It’s been greatly received. People are digging it, even though they haven’t had a chance to hear some of the other ones. It was really cool to be able to play some of them live, even if people haven’t heard them yet. For a band, you play the same music over and over, it’s always fun when you do a new record. We were looking forward to that. The coolest part is to get out-of-town and to play a bunch of new stuff for people.”
Since their earlier releases, Three Days Grace had not toured extensively internationally. While they have had high-profile records across North America, their focus has now switched over towards the overseas route and Stock and the band are excited to perform for new fans.
“This time around, on this record we’ve thought ‘you know, we pounded it out so hard in North America for years and years, and we’ll continue to do so. We didn’t hit a lot of places. We have so many fans all over the world who have been hounding us for years and years to play. We just didn’t make it happen. So that’s definitely our goal on this new record is to reach out to places we’ve never been, or we haven’t been to in a long time. We were in Russia in the fall. That was our first time there. It was overwhelmingly amazing. We were super accepted. It was a cool one for us. Now we just got back from Argentina and Brazil, where we haven’t been back to since 2004. The fans are just going crazy.”
“Like I said, that’s our goal. We’re constantly, between us and management, trying to find new places and reaching out to these places. That’s what we’re going to do for the next two years, and obviously continue what we’re doing here. We’re going to Europe in June. We have a bunch of the festivals we’re doing over there, and a whole bunch of countries again we’ve never been to. We’re excited about trying to reach out to as many of these fans that have never been able to see us live. Live is our most favorite thing to do. We love to do it and we love to share that with people. To us there’s nothing greater than having your fans sing and having a great time with you. We need to reach out to all of those people. That’s our goal this time.”