85 Pound Poutine is an improvised comedy death metal band that was formed in 2007 as a side project by members of the band Wolven Ancestry. The project was never meant to be serious, however the band ended up playing tons of local shows and eventually toured around Eastern Canada due to the bands growing popularity in the Canadian underground metal scene.

 

It all started when Wolven Ancestry was on tour in the United States, and before a show we were given a massive poutine to share by the owner of Cocktails, a venue we were playing in Morrisonville, New York. Being from Canada, the owner wanted to impress us by making us a poutine. He ended up coming out with a poutine that weighed so much it was hard to hold up, and it ended up feeding all 6 members of the band. The comment was made that it must have weighed 85 pounds, and after the tour three members of the band decided to start a side project called "85 Pound Poutine".

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The idea was to improvise everything we did, from the albums we recorded to the songs we played live and incorporate an improvised comedy element to the mix not only lyrically, but also as part of the live stage show experience. As a result, the first album was produced in a single session for each instrument. We also decided to use stage names, with Cheese Jackson on guitar, Fries McGee on drums, and Gravy Smith on vocals. It became our motto that "we never play the same song twice".

 

We worked together very well and had a special bond between us being able to come up with our individual parts on the spot, without any effort and as we began playing live shows, we would often not even bring any equipment and just share or borrow the instruments from the bands we were playing with. This made gigging much easier, especially when it came to touring, although some of the bands we played with were not too happy when we would show up with just a guitar and drum sticks to the gigs. 

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85 Pound Poutine ended up recording 3 albums and playing quite a few shows including festivals and opening slots for bands like Green Jelly, Incantation, Beneath the Massacre, Cryptopsy, Estuary, Hallows Die, and many more notable metal bands. The band was active from 2007-2015 and would often record our shows, posting lyric videos afterwards of some of the songs from the shows we would play. We would also incorporate poutine eating contests at some of the shows and would even have people choose the name of the next song, in which I would have to freestyle lyrics relating to the song name they randomly chose. 

 

It was hard for people to believe that we were actually improvising everything on the spot, and even we had a hard time believing it ourselves at times. 85 Pound Poutine was a groundbreaking band in many ways and was perhaps the first band of its kind. The synergy between the members of the band was truly amazing, and there may never be a band quite like 85 Pound Poutine again.