It's a whole new level of entertainment for band Spoken, special guests as CN Centre hosts Danish rock band Volbeat and Canadian band Danko Jones March 25 at the 94 Xplosion.
"This tour is way better than we expected -- it's an amazing experience for us," said Ryan Pei, bass player for Spoken. "It's definitely a market that we're not used to playing. We haven't played a tour this big or played to this many people on a regular basis and that's just awesome."
Spoken includes Matt Baird, vocals, the only original band member, Ryan Pei, bass, and Oliver Crumpton, drums.
Spoken's music has heavy metal influences and a melodic hard rock sound that keeps its catchiness, too, explained Pei.
"At first we were doing heavier stuff and it just naturally went that way," said Pei. "As time went on we were writing songs that were more melodic and we had the intention of having songs that went over well live and we wanted songs that were easily accessible for radio. We're never pinned down to one style. We just come to the table with everything we have and try to find the connectors between all of them."
Spoken released its new album Illusion last month, its first since 2007. It's a first for Pei who joined the group about four years ago.
"We went into the process of reinventing ourselves, being grateful for the history of the band but we wanted to do something that would take us to the next level," said Pei. "We were done with the previous record label that we were on and it's really a clean slate and thought this would be the best time to do it. We just went into it with the mind set of trying to go in a whole new direction. So the album is what came out of it and we're excited."
The first single from the album is Through It All.
"It's a song we struggled over writing for a long time and we pushed it to the back burner for a long time," said Pei. "Finally at the end we came back to it and it came back to Matt's music and lyrics. It was around the time the tornado had completely destroyed Joplin, Missouri and it's a song about going through hard times and coming out strong and rising out of the fire and it's really about hope and that's what our band wants to portray -- hope."
The show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are at all Ticketmaster outlets.
