Local hardcore quartet The Viking Club is composed of vocalist Eric Warner, bassist Marc Lecompte, Michael Rosenberg on drums and Matt King on guitar. Matt took some time to answer some of Outoftheshine's questions via email.

Who are you, where are you from, what are you trying to accomplish? We are the Viking Club: 25% Michael, 25% Matt, 25% Marc, 25% Eric. We want to play as often and to as many people as possible, to be 100% happy, and to continue creating music that stretches us to our physical and mental potentials.

I see your group as one that sits somewhere between the younger hardcore scene and the college rock scene. Has this had any effect on how you write music? No, it hasn't. The music we write dictates the kind of fans we get, not vice-versa. We're not influenced by fans, we're influenced as fans of bands, including: Les Savy Fav, The Inbreds, Shotmaker, North of America and a metric tonne of other sounds/sights we have heard in our collective lifetimes.

Is The Viking Club any relation to the breakfast club or the club sandwich? 100% of us eat breakfast, 75% of us have seen the movie, 25% makes club sandwiches, and a different 25% eats them.

How has your experience as a promoter helped or harmed your band from a musical or marketing perspective? Well, you are referring to Eric, who can't be with us right now '“ but having a promoter in the band has done both harm and helped us. It's a known fact that people are 75% more likely to do bands favours if they get something in return, so when we first started the fact that Eric regularly talked to other promoters helped get us off the ground. However, it has also harmed us 25% in that people are led to assume that we are business-minded, or follow a particular marketing strategy, which we're quite against. So really we are at a stasis in the end of it all.

What's up with the record you've got coming out? A 2-song, 3'? disc? Well, it's been out for about 25% of a year already. The two songs were recorded by a friend of ours, Steve Clarkson, who recorded us onto 2'? tape through all analog gear at Broadcast Lane in Toronto. We hand-make everything we sell (or give away). The CD packaging is screen-printed vellum, with individually drawn blue inserts and triangular foldouts with individually drawn blue inserts, colours include: some black, then blue, then white again, then black, the other colors vary from maroon to avocado green, then the disc itself is shiny silver with blue, brown, green, and yellow on it.

The video on your website is definitely one of the more strange video ideas I've seen. What's the story? 100% of anything I say about this video could very easily be disproven, other than the fact that there is a bunny mask rotating on a record player and it scares me.

A Wavelength show seems to fall more on the side of the 'œcollege rock'? crowd. Do you expect some of your hardcore-ish fans to walk on the wild side for a night? To be safe, it would be best to brace oneself for the 300% increase in Hatebreed and/or Madball t-shirts, maybe even some Murphy's Law shirts for good measure. Do people really consider us 'œyounger hardcore'??

What's next for the band? Any plans to tour? We are currently in the process of applying to the Halifax Pop Explosion, midterm schedules pending and plan to play some shows on the way out there with the amazing SOURKEYS! Other than that, we play almost every weekend around southern Ontario and hope to branch out to reach into Quebec and the eastern U.S. as soon as time allows.

I've read some of your lyrics in passing and they seem to more or less be lyrics of The Beatles songs rearranged, what's up with that? What are you talking about? We sing about friendship, overcoming obstacles, observations and other fun issues. No plagiarism here...