5 Knuckle Surprise

Band members:
Mark Desmarais – Guitar, Lead Vocals
Mike Rand – Bass, Backing Vocals
Johnny “Gusto” Montour – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Shawn Rice – Drums

Web:
5 Knuckle Surprise facebook
Official

Start listening:
5 Knuckle Surprise - Say Just Stay

Bio: 
Originally formed in 1994 as a 4 piece high school cover band called "under the influence" (an incredibly original name). I think after a year and a half we had 6 original songs. We played mostly high school shows and then one day we graduated form high school and there was nowhere to play anymore, but we kept practicing for the fun of it. Next Things took a dramatic change once mid 1996 came around. Nick Snow vocals/guitar at the time, quit the band to focus on school and football. The remaining 3 of us practiced for fun on occasion until one day we covered a face to face song at one of our practices, the raw sound of punk rock was exactly what we needed to break away from the (at the time) ever so popular yet unenergetic "grunge" style. Face to Face led to the Descendents led to Bad Religion led NOFX led to Lagwagon led to........... you name it. With our changing preferences in music, came what we think of as a nice blend of beats and sounds that we liked and had fun playing and that was enough to get the ball rolling on what has shaped up to be Five Knuckle Surprise.

(1996-2000)
1996 to mid 97 was nothing but pure practice of our own brand of fast punk until we landed a show through a friend of a friend over at the old "Purple Haze" showbar in Montreal. From there we had got the itch to play live anywhere we could. We ended playing a lot of shows, in a lot of places. For a while it seemed like we were always playing shows and we loved it, in doing so we also met a lot of cool people. In this time period we had recorded a full length album that unfortunately we never released and that very few people have. There are however 2 songs from this recording released on 3 different compilations (check our media section for details). In November of 1997 we were lucky enough to be asked by Greenland Productions to open up the show for Diesel Boy and X-large. Since then we have played with some really cool bands like SUBB, Jughead`s Revenge, Mustard Plug and All the Answers. But things were going to change again! Stay tuned for the E true hollywood story!

(2000-2002)
Mark moves to Ottawa,,,, the nations capital. For 2 years the entire project gets put on hold to the point where we are not even a band anymore and the name Five Knuckle Surprise just fizzels out and drops off the Canadian punk rock map. It was however a nice break, we were now able to start fresh. (2003-2005) They've been included on numerous compilations (Raw Energy Records, Freedumb Records, Simple Things Records, and the recently released Burnout Productions compilation featuring Allister from Drive-Thru Records). Their sophomore release entitled “…Til it Hits You”, (Final Records, Dec. 2003) has been getting rave reviews, and excellent distro through a company called Local Distribution and is now widely available at HMV and Archambault record stores, as well as smaller outlets.

Discography:
Albums:
 ..til it hits you (2003, Final Records, CD)

Tracklist:
01. Asterisk
02. Do You Understand
03. Until It Hits You
 04. Without You Here
05. The Way It Goes
06. Stuck
07. Second Chance
08. Probably Not
09. Say Just Stay
10. Grade a Ditz
11. Canadians Eh!?
12. Who Breaks First

-Watts & Watts of Punk

Tracklist:
01.Canadians eh?
02.No way out
03.Dead end job
04.Stuck
05.Stubborn
06.Grade A ditz
07.Sounds of the world
08.What can I do?
09.Small dick song
10.Punk you you (I'm not)
11.Your world
12.Too bad so sad
13.Out of time
14.Nemeless
14.Live track from 97