Canada’s boycott on goods south of their sovereign border has seen King Charles’ subjects declare a 91% majority in favour of relying less on purchases made from the USA, in light of that country’s president’s constant tariff-shuffling shenanigans. Good news then for Finger Eleven, one of the Great White North’s best-selling bands of all time, who released their seventh album, Last Night On Earth, last year through Better Noise Music.
The multi-platinum selling band have released four singles from the parent album thus far, namely title track ‘Last Night On Earth’, ‘The Mountain’, ‘Blue Sky Mystery’ and ‘Adrenaline’.
‘Blue Sky Mystery’ guest featured Filter‘s Richard Patrick and saw Finger Eleven achieving their 11th Billboard Top 10 radio hit in Canada, while ‘Adrenaline’ reached the Top 20 on the Mediabase Active Rock chart and went straight in at No. 2 on the Active Rock chart in Canada, holding strong in the Top 5 for over four months.
Acknowledging their expectation of big things ahead for their latest album, guitarist Rick Jackett recalled: “As we were making Last Night On Earth, there was this feeling that we were making a big rock record. We had done that early in our career, and then we veered away from it. But it was time to go back and embrace that bigness of the sound. Even the soft songs sound big.”
Although writing four-minute songs has been seen as one of their strengths, Black added that he felt ‘The Mountain’ “feels like a seven-minute epic squeezed into that time, with music as epic as the lyrics are.”
“The setting is a fantastical one. At its core, it’s a song about trying to find the music,” added frontman Scott Anderson. “The ultimate search is you’re finally at the end of it. When I step back it’s talking about our own journey, but it’s dressed up in a different way. It’s the idea of just trying to find one more cool idea, and hoping it’s not the last one.”
While each of the singles released thus far had accompanying videos, as an early Christmas present to their fans, the group began bringing various songs from the album to life with an eight-episode video miniseries that started appearing via their social media sites.
The shows reimagined songs from the album into real life as science/fantasy/adventure short films in an homage to the band’s favourite genre (such as Krull, The Beastmaster and Flash Gordon). Apparently, they’re not only big fans of such movies but also those popular tabletop role-playing games that have arrived back in the spotlight thanks to the popularity of the Netflix series Stranger Things and the Hellfire Club.
Finger Eleven‘s video miniseries has been described as “deliciously campy and steeped in the Good vs. Evil trope”. Canadians might view such similarities to their boycotting of American goods.
