Words: Miljan Milekić
Without D.O.A., Canadian punk wouldn’t exist. I am exaggerating, I know, but the Canadian scene would for sure be very different without them around. Almost every Canadian band I grew up listening to, which is quite a few, considering I was born and raised in Europe, was either directly influenced by D.O.A. or influenced by bands influenced by them, so after moving to Canada, I made it a mission to catch the band live! And I finally did, at Saskatoon’s Black Cat Tavern.
Saskatoon’s Bitter State were already on stage by the time I got to the venue, delivering their version of hardcore sound. I didn’t know anything about the band, apart from the two songs I found on their Bandcamp, so I didn’t really have an idea what to expect from their set. It didn’t, however, take long before I saw a theme – loud, fast, and aggressive. They did have fans of their own as well in the building, adding a bit more flavour to their set with some back-and-forth banter between the songs, along with the impromptu contest over who is the most bitter person in Saskatoon.
Right off the bat (or a hockey stick in their case), D.O.A. opened with a pair of legendary tracks, ‘Class War’ and ‘D.O.A.,’ quickly establishing what the rest of the night would be – high-speed, aggressive, yet melodic hardcore punk on, and mosh pits off the stage. With bands like D.O.A., which have been around for 30, 40, or 50 years, I always like to take a look at the crowd and see how many generations of fans are there. I find the age gap between people standing next to each other and singing the same songs just beautiful.
Singer Joe Keithley is 69 years old – he’s older than both of my parents, and yet, his music speaks to me in my mid-30s. It spoke to me when I was in my early 20s, and it would probably speak to me in my teens had I known the band at the time. But more importantly, it still speaks to the youth of today. I’d love to credit that solely to the timelessness of the band’s music, and not to the fact that the world feels pretty much as fucked up as it did when they first started, but the truth is that it’s a bit of both. Hell, ‘Fucked up Donald’ was released in 2016, and here we are in 2025, with the song a staple in the setlist, and the US on the verge of full-on authoritarianism.
Whatever they picked from their bag – ‘The Enemy,’ ‘World War 3,’ ‘Smash The State,’ ‘2+2,’ everything still sounds fresh and current, to the point where I would kinda like that it didn’t. And I’m sure that Keitlhey himself, given his lifelong activism and political career, would be the first one to wish for D.O.A. to become a legacy nostalgia act, if that meant their songs would become records of the past instead of today’s news. But until that fight is won, at least we know they still sound amazing and put on a great show.
