Default

In the opening years of the new millennium, Vancouver outfit Default embodied a direct strain of hard rock built from grunge’s guitar textures and melodic inclinations, post-grunge’s somber and sincere tone, and the weighty, dense sonics—though not the hip-hop elements—of the emerging alternative-metal wave. Guitarist Jeremy Hora and drummer Danny Craig, each already four years deep in the city’s club circuit, launched the project under the name the Fallout during the summer of 1999. After holding tryouts for singers, they recruited their former high-school peer Dallas Smith, whose vocal force compensated for limited prior experience. A demo cut with a session bassist reached Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, who recognized Hora and Craig from earlier groups; he volunteered to helm their first independent sessions, and the band began performing regularly throughout Vancouver.

In 2000 the quartet entered a contest run by a local station, securing a track on the Vancouver Seeds 2000 compilation just before adopting the name Default. The single “Deny” quickly dominated area rock airwaves, prompting TVT Records to offer a contract. Bassist Dave Benedict came aboard as a permanent member soon afterward. With that lineup in place, the group tracked its first proper album, The Fallout, under producer Rick Parashar during the spring of 2001; the record appeared before the year ended. Their sophomore effort, Elocation, followed in late 2003.