Quarter Tank is a Toronto-based, four-piece punk band who’ve been making music since 2006. The band is made up of Johnny McNabb on guitar, Jesse Mackowycz is on vocals and bass,  Dean Glover on drums with Billy Gregory on vocals.

There have been some lineup changes since the band formed, but Quarter Tank released their second album, IGNITER on September 7th of this year. It’s an eight-track, 20 minute musical attack. The songs are short and aggressive and it reinforces what we’ve been saying all along, punk rock is alive and well in Toronto.

We had the chance to chat with Jesse about their album release show at Cherry Cola’s Rock ‘n’ Rolla Cabaret & Lounge on December 6th and much more.

Check out Jesse’s answers and hit play on the stream of IGNITER now. If you like what you hear, come on out and support the band.

Quarter Tank Q&A

Q) You’ve been together since 2006, an you tell us about how Quarter Tank came together?

Quarter Tank) We’ve all been friends for over 20 years and have been playing in bands together off and on for about the same time.

Johnny and I started QT after our last band fizzled out and we were still hungry to be in a band and still writing amazing songs.

So we went from a 5 to 3 piece band figuring less people, fewer problems. Once we got bored of that we asked Billy to come on board and it was the smartest move we made and that was 7 years ago now. Dean replaced our original drummer who quit after 12 years and that was probably the toughest to overcome but we did just that as you can clearly hear on IGNITER.

Q) Who are your musical influences?

Quarter Tank) Rock, punk and metal….Classics and modern from Descendants to The Bronx from AC/DC/Halen to The Cult from old school to new school metal.

Personally, the players who had the biggest influence on me are Michael Bishop (forever #1), Lemmy and old school Mike Dean (pre meeting him and realizing he’s a jerk off).

Q) You released your second album in September. Can you tell us about the writing and recording process for IGNITER?

Quarter Tank) It was a LONG process HA well, at least vocally it was. Musically we had a bunch of songs ready to go, then our drummer quit, so after a short stint with another old drummer/friend, we were finally able to start finishing the record once Deaner was in. We had some old songs that have always been hanging around, just waiting for their time to be finished and recorded and I think we have about 3 or 4 of those on IGNITER. Once the music was polished we had the task of executing the vocals and arrangements that Billy had in his brain but we were unsure that we could pull it off. I loved it when he said to me one day “It sounds REALLLLLLY good in my head but I don’t know if I could EVER pull it off”. Well…just listening to the album once it was done erased all the doubt he had. We’ve made lots of music together and to hear him say “I did it” was a very proud moment.

Q) You’re playing your album release party for IGNITER at Cherry Cola’s on December 6, can you tell our readers what to expect from a live Quarter Tank show?

Quarter Tank) Energy and lots of it! Short songs. Short set (don’t wanna overstay our welcome ya know), good banter and a whole lot of good times… oh, and probably lots of Hi-Fives too!

Q) I see one other live date on your Facebook page in London in January. Will there be more dates?

Quarter Tank) There’s another date on January 25 in Hamilton at Doors and we’re currently booking a whole bunch of other stuff in Ontario and Quebec as we speak.

Lots of adult schedules to deal with so that always makes it challenging in itself. But we’re gonna play this album out as often as we can.

Q) Tell us about the new merch that will be available at the shows?

Quarter Tank) New album, New gear! We were WAY overdue for a new merch kit and based on the IGNITER album cover our brother Adam Swinbourne created, why wouldn’t we go all out?!

CD’s, T-Shirts (boys and girls!), stickers, pins, posters and whatever else we can plan and get in before the show. Looking at hopefully doing vinyl release of IGNITER in the spring if we can and who knows, maybe a new EP will follow soon after. We’re feeling pretty jacked about the band these days. so we gotta capitalize on that energy while we can.

Q) Is there anything else you want us to share with our readers?

Quarter Tank) Thanks for the support, thanks for reading something about a band you’ve never heard of and Yeah, speaking of which…why not give us 20 minutes of your time and check out IGNITER?! If you dig it, come on out to a show, pick up some cool swag and hang out!

Quarter Tank IGNITER Track List

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Trish Cassling

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Toronto Music Blogger