by Oliver St John

     For some years now, a band by the name of Pilate had been making waves north of the border, and was named Best Unsigned Band at the NXNE festival in Toronto in 2002. Late last year, though, they changed their name to Pilot Speed and made their US debut with the album Into The West. We caught up with lead vocalist Todd Clark to ask him a few questions.

     What prompted the original name, and its subsequent change? The change, it appears, was largely down to a potential similarity. "If we'd kept the name, we might have ended up in a lawsuit from a company with similar use of the word or similar phonetics. Rather than get a year down the road and have to change it then, it was kind of a pre-emptive strike. In the US, it's not about winning the lawsuit, it's about how much it costs you to stay in the game, and we didn't really have the money to want to fight the battles, and none of us were too attached to the name."

     The band signed with independent label Wind-Up Records to release this album. "We had a feeling that there would be time to grow there, and if the first set of tunes doesn't come out gangbusters, you'd get another shot to do what you need to do. We know so many bands in Canada and elsewhere who have signed to large labels in the US, and they've put out one album or even one song and it hasn't gone the way the label wanted it to. Next thing you know, the band's stranded on the road and dropped from their label. We wanted a bunch of people who really believed what they said when they spoke about developing artists."

     The leadoff single, "Barely Listening," is a soft yet intense track which captures the listener and draws it in. Clark isn't generally one for explaining his lyrics, but he does give us a little background into the song: "In that tune, I wanted to explore - you know the idea that things all happen for a reason, that there's some sort of omnipotent force guiding everything? I wanted to explore the flip side of that, that there's nothing guiding the universe, it's just made up of random chaotic events.Some people would argue that the fear of that being the case is what brought about a lot of world religions. I just wanted to talk about the fear or horror for people that there's nothing governing their lives and that these things can happen for no reason."

     The band themselves are no strangers to random chaotic events, having had a few odd experiences on tour, though Clark stresses to add that things have become much tamer nowadays. "We're getting a little older, and some of the guys in the bands we've toured with have kids, so things are a lot tamer than they used to be." They recently opened for Annuals on a number of tour dates, including a performance in Seattle at which they were described by a Seattlest reviewer as "too good to be an opening band". They are about to embark on a tour with Copeland - catch them if you can!