The Birthday Massacre's Chibi on Album, Touring, Hobbies and Going Home

Friday night Toronto's own synthpop group The Birthday Massacre made a stop at Detroit's Harpos along with Aural Vampire, Dommin and Black Veil Brides.

The band is currently touring behind their latest album Pins and Needles, which was released in September.

Before the show I sat down with vocalist Chibi on the tour bus that the band is currently sharing with Aural Vampire.

With three shows left, it was obvious that she and the rest of the band are more than ready for a little downtime back home and being so close to the Canadian border only made the homesickness worse, "Yeah we definitely enjoy playing out this way but it's kind of weird because we're so close to home. Just over the border. We've been on the road for a month on this one and we just came back from the UK before that. We had like four days off and half of us didn't even go home for those days off so we are definitely feeling that. We have three shows on this tour left so we're like...home! We're so close!"

Despite being on the road together for so long, Chibi says that the band gets along pretty well and continue to spend time together once they go home as well.

She also spoke about how happy she has been on this particular tour because they are touring with their good friends Dommin, who they had shared Thanksgiving dinner with the night before, "We are really friendly with Dommin and we've toured with them before. To play with friends is such a good experience. We love touring with bands we are friendly with; bands we have a good time with. That's what is most important."

After talking about the name that Dommin has made for themselves through touring with a variety of different bands over the past year, Chibi spoke about vocalist Kristofer Dommin's talent and the fact that he has been urging to her to get on stage with him to help perform Dommin's cover of Cutting Crew's "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight", "He wants me to but I am so scared! I don't want to ruin it. Kris has such a amazing voice."

Chibi went on to to speak about how important touring is to a up and coming band, "I think touring is important. I mean that and obviously the Internet but that can stab you in the back too. It's the double-edged sword I guess. I mean use the Internet to get to a certain point and then if you can tour it's a good thing. Just tour with a band you like. Tour with friends. Develop a sense of community and I think people will find that contagious."

After bringing up seeing them as a opener for Mindless Self Indulgence a couple of years ago and how that tour seemed to increase their exposure, Chibi went on to share, "At this same venue actually. We were just talking about that earlier today. That's what is really good about opening for other bands. You know doing a support gig for another band is all about exposing yourself to all of their fans. This is a co-headlining tour as well so hopefully some of those fans will end up finding out about us through this as well. We're still an underground band but we've definitely seen improvement creeping up."

With the end of this particular tour, The Birthday Massacre intends to go home and get some rest until the new year. Afterwards, they do intend to tour some more, possibly in Europe where they have not been in a year and a half, "I think we'd like to prioritize getting back over there. You know we'd like to do more video stuff," shared Chibi. "When you're touring, and we've toured a lot over the last few years, it becomes very time consuming so I think that this time we want to retain the creative elements of the band instead of just grinding ourselves on the road."

Chibi went on to share that during her downtime when she's not writing she enjoys knitting, which is a great way to relax, "You can sit and watch a movie and at the end you have this great thing. It's cool."

So far the reaction to the band's latest album Pins and Needles has been good with the album making a Billboard appearance in it's first week, which was a nice accomplishment for the band.

The album's first single is the hard hitting track "In The Dark" and it's subsequent video has made it a favorite of Birthday Massacre fans, "It [the song] was the one that sort of jumped out at all of us as being "the one". It was the one we all sort of latched onto. For the video, Mike [Falcore], our guitar player, co-directed it with Rue Morgue, which is a Canadian horror magazine. His whole thing is film and his whole concept for it was built around that. I was like alright I know him so well and it was like you're gonna be the director? But it came out really, really well. I think it's interesting too because this time we had sort of full creative control instead of collaborating with other people on a video. We were able to put in a lot of elements that we really wanted to. Elements that our old fans will recognize like the forest and masks. There's a lot of traditional band elements in there." Chibi explained.

When asked about the next single Chibi said that they haven't talked about it yet but that the fans seem to really enjoy and be vocal about "Shallow Grave".

She went on to say that although linking the video concepts together could be fun that it is also nice to perhaps do something completely different.

Chibi also talked about what makes this album different for the band, "We self-produced this one which was good. It was also sort of interesting because we took a year off to write it. Mike and Rainbow [rhthym guitarist and backing vocalist] went back to their hometown to sort of regroup and start writing the music there. They would send me fragments of it because I stayed in Toronto. So they had this sort of interesting going home experience. We've always sort of written consecutively with sort of what would be fun to perform live and what would translate well live and I think that this album reflects that."

On this particular tour they have been performing a number of their new songs and had just added another new one to the set list a few nights before.

When talking about gaining new fans, Chibi spoke about her idea of what The Birthday Massacre is, "Gosh. I hate this question (laughing). We like different contrasting styles. We grew up in the eighties and nineties and sort of listened to all kinds of different things and that's what we try to sound like. It's a mixture of metal and synth-pop and industrial with a girl singer."

When asked if music like Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now", which The Birthday Massacre covered on their Looking Glass EP, was a big influence, Chibi shared, "Oh definitely. I think I was in grade seven when that song came out so that was big and it was the same for the other guys in the band. It was the anthem of your adolescence at least for us anyways. We had a special affection for that song."

The Birthday Massacre formed back in 1999 under the original name of Imagica before taking the Birthday Massacre name from a song that later became "Happy Birthday", "It's so hard to pick a band name that isn't already taken. A band name can be so stupid. It's such a difficult process to think up a cool name."

After sharing that I'd seen the local Detroit band Band With No Name (BWNN) the night before, Chibi laughed and said, "See that's the right idea; they just gave up!. It really is hard. It's terrible to have to do and changing your name is even harder."

Chibi went on to talk about how the band got together, "Mike and Rainbow have known each other since they were kids and they played in other bands together. I met Rainbow in college. I wasn't a singer or in a band. We started the whole thing as just a way to be creative because we liked music and we liked writing music. It was just sort of a way to have fun on the weekends. It was cheap and a way to have fun with friends. The band just kind of grew out of our friendships with each other. It kind of naturally morphed into what it is. We're very lucky to have gotten as far as we have."

To close the interview I asked Chibi where she sees the band down the road, "I don't even know. I don't know what the state of the industry is right now to even predict what is possible for a band to do nowadays. I mean our whole thing is that if we're enjoying doing this we'll continue doing it but if it stops being fun and we're all miserable it'll end. Hopefully that won't happen!"