Quo Vadis (band)

Canadian metal band

Quo Vadis was a Canadian melodic death metal band from Montreal, Quebec, formed in 1992 by Bart Frydrychowicz, Yanic Bercier, and Arie Itman, named after the novel by Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz. Since its inception, the band released three studio albums, one compilation album, one demo, one live DVD, one live album and two videos. Not to be confused with another technical death metal band from Poland, bearing the same name.

Quo Vadis was formed in 1992 by guitarists and vocalists Bart Frydrychowicz and Arie Itman and drummer Yanic Bercier. Initially the band's music consisted of Metallica and Megadeth covers. However, over time, the band began to write originals and incorporate them into their live shows. By 1995, the band had written several originals and wanted to record a demo. Bassist Remy Beauchamp was recruited as a permanent member after the band tried out 17 others and soprano vocalist Sebrina Lipari performed on certain songs live. The Quo Vadis Demo was released on cassette on March 21, 1995, through VomiT Productions and helped the band establish themselves in the Montreal metal community.

In early 1996, Quo Vadis headed back into the studio and recorded their debut album with Pierre Rémillard, who had previously worked with Cryptopsy, as producer. On April 10, 1996, Forever was released and was received favorably by both fans and critics, leading Earth AD Records in Germany and Immortal Records in Poland to sign licensing deals with Quo Vadis.

After signing onto Hypnotic Records in 1999, Quo Vadis received a budget of around $20,000 to record their second album. Recorded at Victor Studios and produced again by Quo Vadis and Pierre Rémillard, Day into Night was released on March 30, 2000, in Canada. Whereas the composing duties for Forever were credited to all members, a majority of the songs on the Day Into Night album were in fact written and recorded by Arie. However, due to logistical problems, the album was released to Europe in December. To promote the album a video for "Dysgenics" was made. Remy commented on the making of the video, "It was long! We did two days of shooting. It's not the most pleasant thing to do lipsing and pretend to be playing, but it's all worth it in the end. What's really fun is the editing, seeing the whole thing take shape. We did a video release in Music Plus studios in December, but what people saw that day wasn't the finished version. We changed it a lot since and it looks really cool." Day into Night also sold much more than Forever ; Bart compared them: "The reactions have been excellent, to give you an idea, we sold as many copies of the new album in the 6 months as of Forever in 2 years." In the same year, vocalist and guitarist Arie as well as bassist Remy quit the band. According to Bart this decision was influenced by several factors; "I had wanted to bring in someone into the band for vocals all the way back in 2001, this was not possible at the time as some ex members of the band felt that it would diminish their importance or feel threatened." Steve agreed and Bart sent him info on the band and their music. After Steve finished his tour with Testament, he met with Bart for the first time in the Montreal Airport. For vocals, Quo Vadis recruited Stéphane Paré to replace Arie. Bart praised his vocals, saying, "In any case, the most important issue was to fix the weak delivery of vocals live. And that's been addressed when Stéphane came in." At the same show, Bart's right knee, which had both ligaments torn away in a sports injury, gave in completely and he supported his entire weight on his left knee for the rest of the show. However, this was to no avail as eventually Rob "The Witch" from Necronomicon and Stephane from BCI had to carry Bart around for the rest of the set, eventually having him sit up on a chair for the remainder of the show. Stéphane proposed cutting the show short but Bart refused and played on till the end. In the following months, both his knees had to have surgery. This changed line up consisted of Patrice Hamelin (of Martyr) as drummer, Trevor Birnie (of Damascus & Annex Theory) as vocalist and Roxanne Constantin (of Negativa) as bassist and keyboardist. A rough mix of a new track, "Equilibrium", was released on the band's Myspace page on October 25, 2008. In late 2009, Trevor Birnie left the band's line up and was replaced with Matthew Sweeney in early 2010 on vocals.

The band was heavily inspired by Metallica and Megadeth, The album Defiant Imagination features two songs written about Chuck which are also dedicated to him. For bass duties on Defiant Imagination, Bart had contacted Steve Di Giorgio who had played on Death's Individual Thought Patterns.