Words by Art Jefferson
Photos by Shelby Wilson
Dermabrasion is the Toronto-based duo consisting of Adam Bernhardt and Kat McGouran. Their sound is an in your face concoction of occult rock, punk, post-punk, coldwave, and industrial, stirred in a fine blend of what they call death rock.
While the inception of the group has only been around for a few years, McGouran and Bernhardt played together beforehand in the dynamic art punk band WLMRT. And while the obvious thing to do would have been to bring that same wild, fun energy to the current project, instead Dermabrasion went darker…much darker. Kat McGouran touches on everything from the corporeal to religion to the dynamics of the human experience via the details of the physical, with her vocal delivery being at times seductive, other times haunting, and even riotous. Their 2021 EP Lunate was the first inkling of the direction that their musical ship was headed. That has now manifested into their debut album Pain Behaviour which is a full throttled sonic experience. Produced by Josh Korody, the 10-track LP is explosive. There are even aspects of hardcore infused on the record. If Dermabrasion’s earlier EP was like jabs thrown in a ring, Pain Behaviour is definitely the knock out blow.
You both started in the band WLMRT. However, before joining that outfit what were your musical heritages? Were you performing in other bands before WLMRT?
Kat McGouran – I think for both of us WLMRT was our first real go at writing, recording and performing our own music. We got lucky it worked how it did for us right off the bat. Not much in the way of performance before that for either of us. We were kids who played our instruments alone in our rooms. I played a few shows with a short-lived Rush cover band in high school, a couple bar shows with my uncles…We also both played trumpet in high school concert band, if that counts, haha. For the last couple years of WLMRT I also played in a band called Prettyboy and we’d just recorded a bunch of material in Feb. 2020 with plans to release and tour and all that in the summer. Things didn’t happen that way with the pandemic and all!
Adam Bernhardt – WLMRT was my first band. I had jammed with people before but it had never really gone past that stage. I pretty much thought I would never get an opportunity to get on stage or anything, I think I was even talking about going to grad school before we started the band.
WLMRT ended in 2020 if I’m correct? You two started working on music that same year. Was there the immediate idea to form Dermabrasion after WLMRT or were you already working on material beforehand?
Kat McGouran – You are correct! Wlmrt’s last show was Jan. 4, 2020. But it was Adam who started working on new music that same year, definitely not me. He wrote all the music on Lunate and recorded everything (except vocals) between summer 2020 and 2021. I don’t think I even touched my bass once.
But for years I had been threatening to do some kind of “bedroom goth” side project. We had been going to goth dance nights for a while and had often said we should start a goth project. I was also really inspired by artists WLMRT played with, like Bonnie Trash (and now we’re on the same label which is wild) and Bridgette Bardon’t, POP 1280, and other amazing acts that came through Toronto DIY spaces in the latter half of the 2010s (what a thing to say) like Special Interest and Pharmakon.
We didn’t know what shape it would take or when, but there was some notion of doing a spooky electronic drum thing whenever the opportunity presented itself. And it did, and so when Adam started playing around with a drum machine that year it was with some vague intent of becoming this project.
WLMRT mixed elements of punk, noise, art rock and more. With Dermabrasion, you still have post-punk incorporated, however the music is much darker, which includes coldwave, industrial, and goth. What inspired that direction of sound?
Kat McGouran – An unyielding resistance to being defined. Haha, sorry. When WLMRT got going I really really really wanted us to be a hardcore band. FAST and HEAVY and MEAN! But we were all bringing a very distinct and slightly different perspective which is why it sounded like it did. And people didn’t know what to do with us, so we got to show up in a lot of different spaces. It was legitimately so much fun. I feel so lucky for that band. It was weird magic and the songs still go so hard.
But I think the perspectives and sounds that we brought to those songs are the same as what we are doing now. Unfortunately for us we’ve just now lost several filters of good taste and have been left to our (my) own dark, campy and dramatic devices.
Adam Bernhardt – We played pretty fast and loose in WLMRT with respect to genre, but I always felt my guitar was like what would happen if the Cro-Mags played Sisters of mercy or something. So the influences were definitely there. I think we still straddle a line. We loved hardcore, but going to the goth nights was eye-opening in the sense that you could still have that edge, that viscerality and you could dance to it haha.
You shared your demo EP Lunate in 2021. It featured the tracks ‘Magic Missile’ and ‘Goblin Dance’. However, you guys recut those tracks and the new versions just burst through the speakers! The drums on the later version of ‘Magic Missile’ absolutely bang. Overall the songs are bigger and even more bolder. I know that fellow Torontonian Josh Korody produced the new record. What was it like working with him?
Kat McGouran – Thank you! I hope people who listen to these tracks feel the drums in their chest. We actually rerecorded all five tracks from Lunate with Josh for the new record because we didn’t have a great understanding of how to do what we wanted to do. We wanted to work with him in particular for that reason–he knows guitar music inside out and the textures and qualities he brings to that are amazing. But he’s also a techno DJ and has the kind of industrial sensibility we needed but were too ignorant to understand how to achieve. It was so, so, so awesome working with him.
Adam Bernhardt – It was a great experience. Incredible. The work he did on the drum tracks is insane, it’s hard to believe it’s us sometimes. He was able to get great sounds out of my guitar, and wasn’t afraid to throw some experimental textures in the mix, like a Nashville guitar or a baritone. We’re super happy with the results. It was also a great learning opportunity, the original drum tracks were my 606 mic’d up through Kat’s bass cab, which, I am now aware, is not the way to do it.
Can you talk about some of the ideas and themes behind your new album ‘Pain Behaviour’? Also what is the inspiration behind the title?
Kat McGouran – Pain behaviour is a clinical term that describes the specific thoughts, feelings and actions that experiencing pain can manifest in people. Whatever kind of pain you carry influences every aspect of how you interact with yourself and the world. I think so many of us spend our lives trying to reckon our physical body with our thoughts. We aren’t encouraged to acknowledge pain, or even acknowledge having a body. Maybe that is just my recovering Catholic showing–which kind of lends itself to all the imagery on the record.
During the pandemic I experienced a significant iatrogenic condition that debilitated me for a few years and has left me with more chronic illness and pain. In the worst parts of it I had to basically sever the mental connection to my body. I literally pretended I was eyes and a brain in a jar. It was a lot of things but it was humbling. As I try to regain my physical health I’ve realized that I’d been pretending my body and its pain didn’t exist for a lot longer than that, and how that was shaping my perception of myself, other people, everything. So, you know, power, shame, acknowledging and accepting wants, needs, limitations, how you go about doing that, what happens when you try…
I know that Hand Drawn Dracula is Toronto-based, and it definitely seems like a good label match for you two. How did you hook up with those guys?
Adam Bernhardt – I’d always enjoyed the music Hand Drawn has put out. We moved recently and found the 10th anniversary cassette in our collection.They’ve always had an incredible roster of artists, many who inspired us before and in the early years of playing in bands. They were a label that, when we were all finished with recording, I wanted us to reach out to, to see if they would be interested in putting our album out. While we were recording Josh asked us if we had any plans for it and we were lucky to be introduced to James, who runs the label. We’re really excited to be working with them.
Kat McGouran – As I mentioned earlier, Bonnie Trash made a significant impression on me when I’d seen them years back when they were performing as a two-piece with a drum pad. Then they released this fucking monster record, Malocchio, on Hand Drawn, also recorded with Josh. So basically I saw Cady Heron wearing army pants and flip flops so I wanted army pants and flip flops. Very grateful it has worked out!
Having spent a little bit of time in Toronto myself pre-Drake, I remember that while there was always a vibrant music scene, and entities like MuchMusic existed, it still felt like if artists wanted to make it somewhat big they had to leave and go to the US. However, over the past 15 plus years Toronto exploded, and from a distance it feels like Toronto is firmly on the radar and acts no longer have to go elsewhere. How would you describe the current Toronto music scene at the moment?
Adam Bernhardt – Toronto’s got an incredible music scene, the sheer amount and variety of talent means there’s never something not going on, at any given day of the week. There have been some fairly high profile venues that have gone under or have been bought out, but the scene still prevails. There are a number of excellent promoters and venues, and there’s always something new to check out. In terms of cultural capital I still think we are a bit underrated honestly.
Kat McGouran – Respect the shoutout to MuchMusic. Their version of MTV’s TRL, Much on Demand, was my number one after-school watch. The biggest events of my tween life were hopping on the bus to go down to the city and wait outside the studio when my favourite bands came through for interviews on tour. My Chemical Romance, Panic! At the Disco, Queens of the Stone Age, definitely a few others.
But that’s not the point! From my POV what’s happening with music in Toronto is very mixed. The music community is thriving for sure. The “next generation” (AKA 20-23 year-olds) are going for it and I’m really stoked. We have been complaining about losing venues but they’re still finding a way to figure it out and doing really cool stuff that has meaning and is community-oriented. And there’s a few other post-punk/darkwave/drum machine bands that are absolutely blowing my mind like Slash/Need, Doctor Cement, Siviyex, Secret Sign, Olga (to name just a few) so we have had a lot of room in the last two years to play with acts that share our approach, learn and grow from them. But I don’t know how we are all sustaining this, to be honest. Even to pay for a practice space is so expensive, so while there’s so much music happening in Toronto I’m not so sure that many can do it full time, and even less so if they aren’t leaving the city (either to tour or to live somewhere less expensive). That being said, we have some great new fests to pick up where a few previous ones have fallen off, like Project Nowhere that happened in October 2023 and the first Prepare the Ground this May, which is going to be huge.
Finally, with the new record landing, can we expect a stream of live shows from you, and will there be any plans to come to the UK and Europe this year?
Adam Bernhardt – We’re definitely aiming to get to NI/Ireland and England in the spring, so watch out for that. We played Prague in October when we released the first single from the record and are hoping to get back there and tour more of Europe soon.
Kat McGouran – Message us to link & build 🙏 (surely this will work as a tour strategy). Still working on the details but we will definitely be playing some Canada dates as well in the next couple of months.
https://www.dermabrasion.ca/
https://www.instagram.com/derma.brasion/
https://dermabrasion.bandcamp.com/
Dermabrasion Spotify