By Andre Mayer
It won’t be long before these guys fall victim to heavy media attention.
Local rockers Victims Of Luxury took over the Rivoli Saturday night while celebrating the release of the first video from their major label debut album. The evening began with the video screening of “Tie Me Up” and concluded with the band firing off live ammunition to a packed house.
Recently signed to Hypnotic Records, with a distribution deal with A&M Records—not to mention a world-wide publishing deal with PolyGram—VOL is taking off.
The quartet hails from Scarborough, and is made up of lead singer and guitarist Yaz Atout, Andy Ghandour on bass and backing vocals, Yaz’s brother Kareem on keyboards and Ken Griffin on skins. VOL released their first record, Too Cheeky, independently in 1993.
The 27-year-old lead singer says that he realized music was his calling “the first time I heard a Beatles’ record when I was five,” he says. Atout has played in bands since he was seventeen, and is extremely happy to see his persistence begin to come to fruition.
Their name reflects their attitude towards life: don’t take things for granted. Atout believes that people don’t realize how good they have it. “The name came to me when I was speaking to a girl I knew, I was younger, and she was whining about how her parents didn’t give her any money to go buy socks. They had only given her $500 and she said she couldn’t buy socks with $500.” But Atout says that the band isn’t trying to push the philosophy too much. “We want to be the kind of band that makes people think, without having to ram anything down their throats.”
As for the band’s sonic assault, VOL takes thunderous riffs and percolating basslines, and infuses them with splashes of Eastern influences. Atout says that the band’s use of exotic instruments such as sitar and tamboura are reflective of their Middle Eastern heritage. So to attempt to label the band’s sound is pretty pointless.
“Labels are for jackets,” Atout says. Atout says that the band’s sound is the product of the myriad musical influences each member brings to the table. “Everybody’s really into all types of music. We listen to everything from pop, jazz, funk, classical. metal…we cover everything pretty much, except for house music.”
But Atout says that the diverse musical influences was thought by many to have obscured the focus of their first album.”
“We got criticized, when we had our indie album, because people thought that it was all over the place. But why write twelve songs that sound the same?” Atout maintains that without different musical influences to draw from, bands become one-dimensional. When talking about their eponymous second album, Atout is extremely pleased, and he says that he doesn’t have to make excuses for it.
“We made a more cohesive record. I think we kept the whole integrity and intelligence that strings the record together, still being able to use the ethnic stuff to flavour it.”
Live, the band simply combusts. The energy on-stage is electrifying, highlighted by bassist Andy Ghandour’s acrobatics. “Andy’s stage presence is his greatest asset,” says Atout, smiling. Atout says that the band tries to keep the live performance aspect fresh by changing existing songs, or introducing new tunes at gigs. He says that some songs translate better into the live performance than others. “Those are the songs where Andy will be jumping the highest.”
Atout says that he is happy with the record deal, and that management at Hypnotic Records has given the band “free reign.” As for making videos, Atout and bassist Ghandour are still undecided. “Videos are a necessary evil nowadays,” says Ghandour. As for the “Tie Me Up” video, Atout says that although he could have easily lip synched the part, he actually sang until his throat hurt.
“I didn’t want people to see me faking like one of those old Duran Duran videos.”
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