Shotgun Rules

Hailing from the forest city, London, Ontario . Shotgun Rules talks to theMOVEMENTZ about the music scene, and the creation of their identifiable brand of aggressive rock.



Loud pulsating drums and bass, heart-wrenching guitar riffs,and distinguishable blaring vocals. Those are the sounds created by John Mackenzie, Ric and Dustyn Mattingley, Corry Van Spronsen and Zach Pero. Together, they make up the five-piece band that has been tearing down venues with their volume and high-energy performances.

The London-based independent band has been reaching more and more ears ever since the release of their latest album, Fugitives and Refugees. Though on hiatus for the past few months, they are looking forward to starting up their live shows once more, and this time with a collection of entirely new material.

Corry Van Spronsen, guitarist, gave us an inside look at Shotgun:

On the birth of Shotgun Rules

Me and the other guitar player, Ric, we were in a different band together, a pop/punk band called Hoodini. We started really clicking together writing-wise, and we started writing stuff that the rest of that band wasn't so much into.

So then we just said that we were going to do our own thing.So for close to a good year, it was just Ric and I writing music in my basement...We picked up Ric's brother, [Dusty] on drums. Shortly after we picked up John, the singer, and that was just through word of mouth from a friend who auditioned for us, and said, "You know what, I would love to do this, but I know a guy who would suit you guys a lot better than me" .Almost immediately [after his audition] we thought, ‘this guy's gonna work out good', so we kept him...

...Joe [the former bassist] left us before the start of the last tour. Zach came to mind, because I'd seen him play with bands like The Joys. I asked him if he could do it and learned all of the songs for our tour. By the time we got back we saw that he fit with the group pretty well, and he's really good musically. So we just kept rolling with him.



On the latest album, Fugitives and Refugees

The album was written over a large span of time. We went into the studio and said we were going to record everything that we had. A couple of the songs that we thought were going to make the album, ended up not really working on tape. They didn't carry over the way we thought they would.

Read More Click Here!