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Loved by Lemmy while Loathing Lenny
By: Adam Grant http://www.machineclothing.ca/SpineRazor/KILLCHEERLEADER/03.mp3 http://www.machineclothing.ca/SpineRazor/KILLCHEERLEADER/09.mp3 
"We do what we do regardless of positive or negative reaction from anybody - I don't really care who likes us," quips Kill Cheerleader vocalist/bassist Ethan Deth from his Toronto home. Draped in leather, dirty jeans, metal shirts, and as much beer as a venue's willing to offer, Kill Cheerleader have managed to finally escape the shadow of a 2001, 5 song EP that sold about 8,000 copies off the stage, and gave them the opportunity to find admirers in Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue and Lemmy from Motorhead. "No one wanted to help us, and we didn't have the money to (make an album) ourselves," explains Deth. "So time went by, and we didn't have a record, and we had this really shitty demo that everyone was buying that we were really embarrassed of - we just wanted to get rid of it. "We weren't happy that that was all we had to show for ourselves - we hated it instantly," explains Deth, in spite of the fact that the EP, as well as the band's heavily heralded live sound has a lot to do with where they are today.
Finally, the band pulled together some cash and took to the studio in the summer of 2004, to record what would become All Hail - Kill Cheerleader's first full-length statement, featuring moments of metal melded with punk swagger, un-cheesy balladry, and 100% rock n' roll attitude. However, getting All Hail out to the masses wasn't as easy as one may expect. After enduring many issues within the mixing stages of the disc, Chad MacKinnon (lead guitar), Kriss Rites (drums), and Deth had to find a label that was willing to take a chance on them without forcing any un-natural changes. Unfortunately, at first, this idea was met with quite a bit of resistance.
"We put the money together to record it, but then we still had nobody that wanted to put it out for us," recalls Deth. "There was interest," he continues. "Labels would talk to us and be like 'we like you guys, but you need to sound more like what's on the radio right now - listen to this Lenny Kravitz album, listen to this Strokes album,' and we were like, 'no, don't you get it? Why do you like us? We have metal in us.' These labels weren't into that - they were trying to steer us into this pop direction. "We like pop music from the '80's, but current pop music is garbage." Enter Spinerazor Records, the Toronto based label that was willing to phone up Kill Cheerleader and take a chance on them. With their support, All Hail is now on the shelves of your local record stores, as the band gears up for a tour that could force the critics to look at this trio as something entirely their own, as opposed to this generation's Motley Crue or Guns N' Roses. "I think reviewers are lazy, and they see that we list them as influences, so they'll compare us to them," says Deth. "But I don't think we sound like any of those bands."
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