Singled Out: Unleash the Archers' Northwest Passage

William Lee | 10-10-2019

Unleash the Archers are releasing their new EP "Explorers" tomorrow (October 11th) and to celebrate we asked Brittney Slayes to tell us about the song "Northwest Passage". Here is the story:

This song is actually a cover of a much-loved eastern Canadian folk musician named Stan Rogers, he's super well known up here but maybe not so much anywhere else. His music can only be described as 'Canadiana' in that he always sings about stories from our history or his love of the country itself. Naturally 'Northwest Passage' struck a chord with us the first time we heard it. We play it during those long van rides on tour and every one of us sings our hearts out. When we hit the studio for our last full-length Apex we recorded this cover as a bonus track, but we just loved the song so much we knew it needed special treatment, so we held on to it so we could release it later and give it the attention (we felt) it deserved.

In the song Stan sings about touring across Canada and equates it with being an explorer hundreds of years ago searching for the Northwest Passage. He talks about the early explorers for which many of our cities, rivers, inlets and mountain passes are named, and through them we feel this insane connection to our history and our heritage, and it just makes you so damn proud to be Canadian. We have toured Canada about as much as Stan did in his day and we relate very closely with the words he sings so passionately in the original.

We, being a metal band, had to put a bit of a spin on it to make it our own of course, and we were honestly not sure what Stan fans and Canadians alike were going to think about it... but so far the reaction has been great. We've had a ton of people tell us that they think Stan would be proud, and that they think we did a killer job, and we've also had a ton of people tell us that they'd never listened to Stan before at all and were now big fans. We are so happy to have brought such an amazing artist to the attention of people that might not have otherwise listened to him. He may be gone but Stan burns brightly in the hearts of all Canadians, that's for sure; some have even gone so far as to say that Stan's 'Northwest Passage' is the other Canadian national anthem, and we have no shame in saying that we strongly agree ;)

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself hereand order the album right here!