Sons of Freedom - ST

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	Super Cool Wagon	03:44
	2	The Criminal	03:32
	3	Mona Lisa	03:36
	4	Dead Dog On the Highway	05:45
	5	The Holy Rollers	05:02

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Judy Come Home	04:04
	2	Is It Love	03:50
	3	Fuck the System	03:20
	4	This Is Tao	04:27
	5	Alice Henderson	06:13

Photos

Videos

Information/Write-up

Sons of Freedom emerged from Vancouver’s underground in 1987 like a steel girder dropped onto a polite party — loud, strange, unbending and absolutely certain of their own momentum. In a city then defined by hardcore punk hangovers and jangly college pop, the quartet carved out a darker, heavier identity, merging art-damaged post-punk minimalism with industrial grind and a rhythmic sensibility that felt more like factory machinery than rock music. Fronted by vocalist and guitarist Jim Newton — a mercurial presence who reinvented his stage name from album to album — and powered by the improbable unity of three rhythm-section lifers all named Don (bassist Don Binns, guitarist Don Harrison, drummer Don Short), Sons of Freedom sounded like no one else in Canada, or anywhere else.

Their 1988 self-titled debut arrived on Slash Records with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Recorded largely at Little Mountain Studios under the guidance of producer Matt Wallace (fresh from Faith No More’s early shockwave), the record delivered a controlled detonation of low-end rumble, hypnotic grooves, metallic harshness, and strangely melodic mantras. The opening blitz — “Super Cool Wagon,” “The Criminal,” “Mona Lisa” — announced a band uninterested in polite choruses or guitar-solo theatrics. Instead, they locked into grooves that felt like conveyors and press-stamps echoing through a midnight warehouse, with Newton chanting, pleading, or crooning like a dissident preacher over the din. The album’s cover, adorned with a defiantly feminist quote from Nellie McClung, underlined their contrarian spirit: political, literate, and carved from granite rather than trend.

The timing should have made them stars. Just before the cultural tremor that would later be labeled “grunge,” Sons of Freedom delivered heaviness without metal cliché, aggression without machismo, introspection without self-pity. They were too early, too smart, too stubbornly Canadian to neatly package. But on campus radio, where ears were sharper and fashion mattered less, they roared — winning a CASBY Award for Most Promising Group and being shortlisted for a Juno in 1990. When their second album Gump dropped in 1991, they achieved a small miracle: debuting at #1 on Canadian college radio the same week Nirvana’s Nevermind entered at #2. Even as the global tide shifted toward Seattle, Sons of Freedom stood their ground with sinew and swagger.

Yet momentum is a fragile currency. Major-label purgatory and the band’s refusal to flatten their edges slowed their ascent. By 1993, after a brief U.S. push via MCA and Chrysalis and a string of ferocious cross-country tours, the group dissolved — briefly reuniting in 1995 for Tex, a rarities collection that confirmed they’d left nothing on the table creatively. What followed was not silence, but evolution: Binns, Harrison, and Short resurfaced alongside Lee Aaron in the industrial-rock project 2preciious, and later in Dave “Rave” Ogilvie’s multimedia collective Jakalope. Newton, always restless, later re-emerged with Rat Silo, a project that carried forward the Sons’ cold groove spirit with cinematic menace.

Sons of Freedom’s catalogue remains a short, dense block of Canadian rock granite: three albums, no compromises, and a sound that anticipated an entire era of heavy alternative music without ever submitting to it. If history sometimes forgets the innovators who built the scaffolding others climbed, the band’s 2014 reunion in Vancouver — a one-night jolt that sold out instantly — proved that those who knew never stopped knowing. In a country that sometimes buries its most adventurous voices, Sons of Freedom left a mark carved deep into concrete and feedback, still vibrating decades later.
-Robert Williston

Jim Newton: guitar, vocals
Don Harrison: guitars
Don Binns: bass, vocals
Don Short: drums
Finn Manniche: strings, cello (track B5)
Cameron Wilson: violin (track B5)

Lyrics by Jim Newton
Produced by Matt Wallace and Sons Of Freedom
Engineered by Matt Wallace
Recorded at Little Mountain Studios, Vancouver, B.C., 1998 except for A4, recorded at Profile Studios, Vancouver, B.C. 1988
Mastered by John Golden and Matt Wallace at K Disc Mastering, Los Angeles, California, USA
Mixed by Matt Wallace, assisted by Darin Sirovyak, Ken Lomas, Steve Waines, and Tim Crich

Photography by David Duprey

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