A Perfect Murder

A Perfect Murder formed in Quebec in 2000 with Carl Bouchard on vocals, Sébastien Gagnon on guitar, Luc Verville on bass and Yan Chaussé on drums, and Kevin Lemire joining on second guitar. The first recordings came quickly: a split with The Burning Bridge and the six-song EP Blood Covered Words, both with Bouchard singing and the band working at the metallic end of Quebec hardcore.

That changed before the first full-length. Bouchard moved to guitar and François ‘Frank’ Pellerin took over the microphone. With Bouchard and Lemire on rhythm guitars, Gagnon on lead, Verville on bass and Chaussé on drums, the band recorded Cease To Suffer at Le Labs Studios. Goodfellow Records and Suburban Home Records released it on May 20, 2003, twelve tracks in under half an hour.

Cease To Suffer took A Perfect Murder well past the local circuit. The band toured with Premonitions Of War and Bury Your Dead, and by the end of 2003 had signed to Chicago’s Victory Records. A commitment to Cyclop Media was still outstanding, and the band closed it out with Rehearsal, an EP pairing new material with Metallica, Slayer and Black Sabbath covers.

Victory released Unbroken in July 2004. Eric Rachel produced, and the album reached a far larger North American audience, backed by long stretches of touring with The Red Chord, Shai Hulud, Misery Signals and Martyr AD. Earth Crisis vocalist Karl Buechner guested on ‘No Truce’. The roots were still hardcore, but Bouchard was already pushing against the tag. In an interview around the album he said he did not consider Unbroken hardcore at all, called A Perfect Murder a heavy metal band and said the next material would head further toward thrash.

The lineup collapsed that October. Pellerin, Lemire and Verville all left, forcing the cancellation of tours with Bury Your Dead and Scars Of Tomorrow. Bouchard and Chaussé kept the band going and rebuilt it around Tennessee vocalist Kevin Randel, bassist Dave Bayreuther and guitarist and producer Pierre Rémillard, formerly of the Montreal metal band Obliveon.

That lineup recorded Strength Through Vengeance, released by Victory in July 2005. The hardcore foundation was still there in the breakdowns and the blunt rhythmic attack, but Bouchard’s writing had pushed into thrash, groove metal and traditional heavy metal, with far more lead playing and soloing. Reviewers at the time picked up on the Pantera-style groove running through it.

The personnel kept moving. Randel left for a stretch, other singers passed through, and the bass and second guitar chairs changed hands, with Bouchard and Chaussé holding the centre. Randel came back, and with Kyrill Ducharme in the later lineup the band recorded War Of Aggression. Released June 12, 2007, it was harder and leaner, built on thrash riffing and groove.

Less than a month later A Perfect Murder announced it was over. The farewell statement counted seven years, one demo, two EPs and four LPs, along with the touring and the friendships built well outside Quebec. It thanked the Quebec hardcore and metal scene, the bands and people who had helped on the road, and Victory Records for the international audience.

Bouchard and Chaussé kept playing together. They joined Pellerin, Lemire and Verville in Modern Crimes, a band with its own mix of thrash, punk and hardcore. A Perfect Murder came back for shows in 2009, then reconvened in earnest in 2011 with Pellerin, Bouchard, Lemire, Verville and Chaussé, most of the lineup behind the early records.

The reunion produced one more album. Demonize came out in 2013 on Germany’s Demons Run Amok Entertainment, produced and engineered by Bouchard and Chaussé, mixed by Eric Rachel and mastered by Pierre Rémillard. Its eight tracks pulled the band back toward the darker, more direct hardcore and metal attack of its early years.

By the latter half of the decade Pellerin, Verville and Chaussé were working together again in Destroy The Machine. Pellerin later said that group started after Bouchard and Lemire wanted a break from A Perfect Murder. A Perfect Murder has worked only intermittently since, its early membership still connected through Quebec’s hardcore and metal community.

-Robert Williston