New album by Breach of Trust in the works

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It's been a long wait, but this summer the patience of Breach of Trust fans will be rewarded when the band launches it's latest CD.

The four-member band got it's start in La Ronge in 1994, and although none of the members are originally from the community, lead singer Marty Ballentyne said he will always consider La Ronge to be the band's home base.

"That's where everything started, and northern Saskatchewan is always going to be home to me," said Ballentyne, who is originally from Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation but now lives in Vancouver. "Because that is where I come from and that is what made me who I am today. I got my start there. You can never go anywhere in life without remembering where you are from."

The band performed on a couple of compilation albums earlier in their careers and put out an EP in 1995, then hit it big in 2001 with their first full-length album, Songs for Dying Nations. The album netted them three awards at that year's Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards-the band was named best group or duo, the CD was honoured as best rock album, and the song Complicated earned the band the award for best song writer.

Now, three years later, Breach of Trust is working on its follow up to Songs for Dying Nations, a yet untitled album Ballentyne expects will be released some time this summer.

"We are still in the planning stages as to what we will be calling it," Ballentyne said. "Things are starting to happen. We are very excited."

Breach of Trust has gone through a few changes since they recorded their inaugural CD, most notably a change in membership. Two founding members, guitarist and vocalist Colin Cheechoo and base-player Zane Kryzanowsky, left the band and were replaced by Dean Zabolotney and Brent Stutsky who, along with Ballentyne and drummer Bill Aubut, make up the new version of the band.

"They're very much different people," Ballentyne said of the new band members. "Different in all the best ways. Because where they're coming from in terms of the kind of music that they're into and the kind of stuff they're influenced by is broader in different ways than where we come from. But it all fits because there's still a lot of common ground between all of us.

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"I think that Brent has a much different style of playing than Zane, and Dean has a much different style from Cheech, so the sum total is different. But there's still familiarity because of the way Bill plays drums and the way I sing and play guitar and the kind of songs that we write ... so we play differently, but it's the best kind of different because it's fresh for us and it sounds exciting and we're all into it."

The new line-up won't be the only change noticeable on the new album, which while not straying too far from Breach of Trust's hard rock roots has allowed the band to explore some new musical depths and directions.

"I hope we're going to places that we haven't gone yet as a band, writing-wise," Ballentyne said. "There's stuff that's lighter in tone, I think, than stuff that we've done before. So it's a broadening of everything, I think, of our idea about grooves and textures and moods and emotions."

The band is fresh off a 12-date tour that took them through Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario and gave them a chance to play some of the old songs, and a lot of the new ones, in front of a live audience.

"We did the whole tour and it was really good. It was really interesting because people knew who we were, although we were doing a tour that was sort of cold because we were not promoting a new album or anything. And the last album that we put out was in December 2001. A lot of things change within that time, especially for people who listen to the kind of music we make. But a lot of people still remembered us and a lot of people came out to see us in different places, so that was cool and it was really good to see that," Ballentyne said.

"It's worked out really good for us because we've hd a good start. We've been at it a long time and we just never gave up and stopped. I think that it is because we were very stubborn and we really wanted this and we believed in it and we just kept going."

-with files from Yvonne Irene Gladue and Darcie Roux