Hometown Tales with Hitman

Hitman

Halifax, Nova Scotia is home to not only the Mooseheads, Alexander Keith, but also Hitman.

Hitman's a grooving stoner metal band.

Their latest record, The Offering, dropped on September 14, 2018 and it's one you might want to check out if you dig music.

Check it out over at BANDCAMP.

The price is even in Canadian dollars. How exotic right?

While you're streaming that, let's find out about Halifax, Nova Scotia through their eyes.

1. St. Louis City is my hometown. I've lived here for most of my life in and around the city. Where are you from?

We are from Halifax, Nova Scotia. 

I (Sylvain) have lived all over the place. New Brunswick, Ontario, Washington State and many others. Grew up with a military family so we were always moving. Finally settled in Halifax about 15 years ago.

2. We have three things that don't really exist anywhere else: the slinger, the gooey butter cake, and toasted ravioli. Tell me about your hometown delicacy.

The first thing that comes to mind is donairs. They are huge here and one of the few places you can get a real donair. 

If you don’t know what that is, it’s a pita with shaved meat and donair sauce, although I'm not totally sure what donair sauce is but it's awesome. 

And of course Sydney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon are from here. Another thing we are known for is The Trailer Park Boys. 

That is all filmed here and you see the actors all over the place. It has become pretty normal. The first time Jordan and I hung out before we started playing together I ended up arm wrestling Mike Smith (Bubbles) and he bought us a drink.

3. In St. Louis, though there have been others. Our biggest hometown team is the St. Louis Cardinals (formerly the St. Louis Perfectos, nee: the St. Louis Browns, not the AL team that moved to Baltimore.) There is nowhere you can go to escape it. I'm a hockey fan, not a baseball fan, so it's a bit weird to me. Tell me about your hometown's big team.

We have The Mooseheads (hockey), which is always a good time to check out and Nova Scotia in general seems to be pumping out amazing professional hockey players. 

Must be something in the air.

4. St. Louis isn't really known for any one type of music scene. The biggest acts I can think of to get out of here alive were Gravity Kills, Nelly and the St. Lunatics, and Sheryl Crow. There's always been a vibrant concert scene though. What about where you are?

The metal scene here is pretty great. It has its ups and downs but it's one big community.  Wintersleep isn’t metal, but they’re from Nova Scotia and have had some success.

5. 20 years ago, St. Louis had about 300 murders each year, floods, and all sorts of other fun things. You might have heard about us being named the Murder Capital of the USA. Nowadays, a lot here is 150. But there are lots of parts of the city that are returning to former glory. On the whole, St. Louis is a better place to live today than before. Is there anything like that where you're from?

I just checked the stats and the most recent I could find said Halifax had 5 murders in 2017 so our number is a bit lower than St.Louis.  

As far as natural disasters, Halifax will usually get hit with a hurricane each fall but for the most part, they are downgraded significantly by the time they reach us and don’t cause a lot of damage.  

We did have Hurricane Juan in 2003 that caused significant damage and had a death toll of 4 people but even that was 15 years ago.  Overall, Halifax is a pretty chill, great place to live, with a vibrant independent music and arts scene.

6. Are you still there?

We are still based out of Halifax but like to hit the road whenever we can to play to new audiences.  Our tours have mainly consisted of Eastern Canada but we have played Warped Tour in New York.  

We’re looking to expand our touring radius here and North America and would love to get over to Europe as well.