Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice spoke to Dan Beehler vocalist and drummer for Canadian Speed Metal pioneers EXCITER. Beehler spoke about the history of the band, the reunion and the upcoming album the band is working on.

Watch the interview here:

When asked about the status on the new Exciter album
“We just went into pre-production, it’s taking a long time because we don’t work on it everyday. With the live shows and rehearsing it has taken a while but it’s getting there, we are pretty excited about it, we like the material. As soon as we are done with the pre-production we are going to start recording and sometime next year it will be out.”

When asked about the musical direction of the upcoming album
“It’s hard to say we are really close to it but so far i think it is a combination of the first three albums by Exciter. it just feels so right to write the album I know the pressure is on us from all over the world to make sure the album is as good or close to the first three albums. There are only 10 songs on the album we are doing it like the old school days.”

When asked if New and old Thrash bands come up to them and cite them as an influence
” Bands like Kreator and Destruction come up to us and tell us they got into music because of Exciter and that Exciter has been a huge influence on them. We get a lot of that from the younger bands and the older bands. I know I have talked to Dave Mustaine years ago he recognized us and said Exciter is one of the pioneers. ”

When asked how difficult it was for Canadian to break into metal scene in the 80’s
“Never mind being Canadian it was hard enough, try being from Ottawa back then you had a black telephone and the mailing service and that was about it and unless you are from Vancouver or Montreal or Toronto forget it. Back then it was almost like you didn’t have a chance in hell. So we were fighting the world, fighting just to get record companies to recognize us in Canada they wouldn’t so we just signed elsewhere. It was hard because we would go out on the road with some American bands and we would have to come home and they would stay on the road and a lot of the times because of the visas because of getting over the boarder we missed out on a lot of tours in the USA which they would just grab bands down there like Anthrax or Exodus. We missed out on a lot and I think we suffered a lot being Canadian. Back then we would go and play to thousands of people touring with Motorhead and come home to Ottawa and nobody really gave a shit. Luckily the rest of the world recognized us before this country. That was back then and things are different now we have a huge Canadian following.”

When asked about how the original band reunited
” There was a bit or turmoil between guitarist John Ricci between and the members of his band the version of Exciter at the time. Something went down where the rest of the band said John had left the band and retired and John didn’t retire, so it all exploded. And Allan Johnson and I heard about all this and the remaining band members said they were going to go on with the band Exciter with the name with no original band members. I’m thinking my brother thought of that name. So I called up John Rucci and I said listen John, Allan and I are sitting right here if you want to do something give me a call. So John says well I don’t know what I am going to do it might take six months or a year to figure out. Within a week he called us up and we sat down and that was it. The first rehearsal was like we took a week off, it had been 30 years.”

Exciter will play their first classic Album HEAVY METAL MANIACS April 7 in Montreal at Le National

Los Angeles StrikeFest June 22-24 The Regent Theater
August, 9-11, 2018, Party San Metal Open Air, Germany
August 25, 2018, True Metal Invasion fest, Singapore