by LORRAINE CARPENTER

From a suburban basement in St. Catharines, Ontario, in late 2001, Dallas Green, Jesse Ingelevics, Wade MacNeil, George Pettit and Chris Steele whipped up a punk-rock twister that's spun out of control all over the country, the continent, and soon, the world. Sidestepping major labels and Toronto clubs in favour of indies and all-ages halls (Ingelevics and MacNeil were still in high school, after all), Alexisonfire's popularity grew from the stage outward, with throngs of young converts plying MuchMusic with e-mail and voting their "Pulmonary Archery" video to the top of the PowerShift countdown.

The quintet's take on screamo - blending the tunefulness and complexity of punk's affable modern offshoot, emo, with the abrasive shred of thrash metal and hardcore - made a success of their eponymous debut album and its recent follow-up Watch Out!, a record busting with tighter, tougher songs and tidy production by Julius "Juice" Butty, a friend of a friend whom the band selected over star producer GGGarth Richardson (Rage Against the Machine, Kittie etc).

Before following their recent U.K. tour with jaunts to continental Europe, Australia and Japan, Alexisonfire are joining the Vans Warped tour with a live show that a certain right-wing daily has described as "a convulsing pit of humanity." The Mirror spoke to Pettit (the screamer) and MacNeil (guitars, vocals) about hurting Danko Jones, hurting themselves, skipping school, having fuckin' fun and courting their porn-star namesake, Alexis Fire.

Mirror: The first time I heard of you guys, it was in an article about the police coming down on one of your shows.

George Pettit: That was our Edge 102 performance. This cop got all mad when I ran outside with a cardboard cut-out of Danko Jones and put it in front of traffic. Then we all went out and played in the street and the cop was none too friendly. But all he did was shake his finger at us for a while and everything was fine.

M: Tell that to Danko Jones.

GP: No, you know what? It could have been a cardboard cut-out of Bea Arthur. It just happened to be the only one there. Sorry, Danko! Nothing personal, big guy.

M: So what was it like balancing the band and school back then?

Wade MacNeil: It was absolutely insane, and it also gave validity to me really not knowing what I wanted to go to university for, which was kinda what we were all hoping for, actually.

GP: Not going to school is the best decision I ever made. This is way better - not having to work, going out on the road and seeing different places. I'm a terrible student but I managed to scrape by and get the bare minimum I needed to get accepted to the Ontario College of Arts in Toronto, but we had all this band stuff going on.

WM: During my last year of high school we made two videos, our CD came out and we were going on MuchMusic and wacky stuff like that. When we made the first video, we shot all night and then drove straight home from Toronto and dropped me off at my first period class to write a test.

M: How'd you do?

WM: Oh, horrible.

Occupational hazards

M: So you guys have racked up a lot of on-stage injuries.

WM: Oh yeah. We try and rock out and have a really good time and throw our guitars around like crazy, and we're usually pretty good about dodging each other but sometimes we get whacked real good. We played a church once and I hit Dallas with the cutaway of my guitar and smashed his cheek open and he punched me in the lip as we were tripping over each other and falling down. I also got hit in the face with a bass guitar once. Fun stuff like that.

GP: At one show in California, I was on my knees and Dallas spun around and hit me with the butt of his guitar. My nose exploded and I leaned over and the blood just started pouring off my face. Everybody gets cut up sometimes, but that can be kind of fun. There's this documentary called Rage: 20 Years of Punk Rock and it's got the singer from TSOL talking about how when you jump on the bed when you're really young and your mom's all like, "Don't do that, you're gonna get hurt," and you're like, "Fuck you, I'm gonna do whatever I want," and you end up hurting yourself. It sucks, but at the same time, you pushed fun to the absolute maximum, you pushed it as far as you could possibly go before you got hurt, and that's rewarding sometimes.

M: Speaking of which - Warped!

GP: Yeah! We're gonna be sharing a bus with Jersey and we love those guys so we're excited to be in close quarters with them. We've never been in a tour bus before - we do vans all the time. We're resilient young gentlemen.

M: What's the mood going to be like on the bus?

GP: Party time, all the time.

M: You're not straight edge, then?

WM: No, we're definitely a party band. But there's a song on the new album ["White Devil"] about how cocaine being fashionable is fuckin' ridiculous. Through touring, we've met a lot of people in the hardcore and punk rock scene who think cocaine is chic. There are a lot of bands trying to be Mötley Crüe, and can't be.

Positively heavy

M: To me, you guys stand out because you have a sense of humour and your music is a lot lighter on the doom and gloom than a lot of popular heavy music. What's up with that?

GP: I can't speak on behalf of all these metal bands - I don't know what their upbringing was like, I don't really care, to tell you the truth - but it seems really contrived, like they're just pandering to people. (Affecting whiny slacker voice) "Oh man, I'm from the suburbs, oh no, my principal doesn't get me." Whatever! We all went through that! These guys are in their mid-20s and they're still whining about how no one understands them?

We just played Hellfest in New Jersey. There were all these moshy metal bands that rock with this real serious attitude, you know, fuck this place up! It's like people have forgotten how to have fuckin' fun. When we write lyrics, yeah, it's gonna come from inside and there'll be really personal stuff there, but we're not gonna do a concept album about how I hate my father.

WM: Goatees and dark imagery and robot-like guitar moves - aw, it's hilarious! We make fun of each other and joke around constantly, so for us to be that way personally and then act serious and mysterious and dark on stage - someone just farted on me in the van (chorus of background laughter) - it would be out of character.

M: Nice. So where'd you hear about Alexis Fire?

WM: From my mom.

M: What?

WM: No, we saw her in a documentary on contortionists.

GP: Not only is she a Las Vegas dancer, she's a lactating contortionist stripper/porn star. We've played Vegas a bunch of times now and I'm always dreading the day we go there and she's got an entourage of shady porn people who are like, "Hey, you stole our bit!"

M: Any grief over the use of her name?

WM: Not really. She loves it.

M: Really?

WM: I don't know. Probably not.

M: You guys should team up and do some cross-promotion.

GP: That's what I was thinking. We probably generated more hits for her Web site than she has, so there's not much to complain about.

WM: I'm sure way more people under 16 know who she is now. Is that a good thing?

On the Volcom stage at the Vans Warped tour at Parc Jean-Drapeau on Friday, Aug. 13, 1 p.m., $38.50

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