Canadian hard-rock quartet Finger Eleven are one of the most successful bands to emerge from the Great White North, which is maybe why they felt like they’d earned the right to down tools for a few years and put their feet up. Now, though, they are back with a new single titled Adrenaline, a song that proves their scintillating meld of ferocious riffs and anthemic hooks has not deserted them in the interim, and release an album of the same name next year.
Guitarist Rick Jarrett got in touch to bring us up to speed.
It’s been a decade since you released your previous record. What’s been the hold-up?
It was a perfect storm of things. I think there was probably genuine burnout because we’ve been doing this since we were in our teens. With a past member, the creative process got a little broken. And then there was just natural time. We never really talked about it, it just sort of happened. We all built families, settled into our homes and, for the first time in our adult lives, we were able to enjoy the fruits of the labour of the last twenty years of working.
What does the new single Adrenaline say about where Finger Eleven are at as we approach 2025?
It’s probably one of our best attempts at adopting a lot of the little things that we used to do and then also trying to push the band in a new direction. The guy who mixed it gave us the best compliment. He was like: “It sounds like it’s from like 1997 and 2037.” That’s always been our goal.
You put out Greatest Hits in 2023. Did you find yourself doing a lot of reflecting on the past as you were putting it together?
For sure. When we were compiling the songs, you couldn’t help but take a second to take stock of the whole career, and when you put them beside each other it’s cool to line them up on a piece of paper – some of them were decades in between songs.
The band were originally called Rainbow Butt Monkeys. At what point did you realise that name was going to be unsustainable in the long run?
We put the first record out when we were teenagers. We toured it across Canada. It actually did pretty good on radio and video and stuff. When it came to finishing that tour and making our next record, we realised: “Okay, this name is actually getting in the way of people listening to the band.” We had gone from teenagers to being in our early twenties, where you stop and go: “I’m not a joke, I’m taking myself seriously!” For us it made total sense to change the name. To our manager, our label, our agent it made zero sense. They were not happy about it.
As the new album is called Adrenaline, tell us what the ultimate thrill ride is for you.
Ah man, I’m an old-school skateboarder, so I still love cruising down big hills. Not necessarily pulling off tricks and stuff, but just a nice long sidewalk surf. I still love that. And for all of us, getting on stage is still the number-one thing we love to do. We live for it. It still brings the kid out in us, and the excitement, and it just makes everything alright. Getting on stage in today’s world is definitely the number one.
Finger Eleven's Adrenaline album will released in 2025 via Better Noise Music.
