Diemonds this girl’s best friend
Toronto band hopes evolution of sound beyond 1980s hard rock will lead to new year breakthrough
Priya Panda still remembers buying her first KISS album as a teenager with her Square One Zellers employee discount.
“I just became obsessed,” says the 27-year-old singer, clad in a baseball T-shirt and black jeans at a coffee shop near her Queen and Bathurst Sts. apartment. “I don’t even know how to describe it. I’d listen to it on my Discman all night before I fell asleep.”
Fast forward to 2014, and Panda is now frontwoman of the Toronto-based hard rock band Diemonds, a group that’s gearing up for what could be their breakthrough year.
Speaking to the Star on a December afternoon, Panda talks about listening to her parents’ records as a teenager, loving The Beatles, and naming her band after one of the earliest listening experiences she can remember — pop crooner Neil Diamond.
But don’t get confused: Diemonds sounds nothing like “Sweet Caroline.”
With their fierce guitar riffs and glamrock stage personas — think Mötley Crüe meets Guns N’ Roses, with a feisty five-foot-five woman at the helm — Diemonds has been steadily building their fan base over the past six years.
Panda and bandmates C.C. Diemond and Daniel Dekay on guitar, Tommy Cee on bass and Aiden Tranquada on drums have played more than 200 shows around the world since releasing their last record, The Bad Pack, in 2012 on indie label Underground Operations.
The band’s style and sound hark back to the 1980s hard rock scene, when torn black jeans and leather jackets were the norm and every song seemed to feature wailing guitar solos and driving drumbeats. But Panda says Diemond’s second full-length album Never Wanna Die, set to drop on April 20, will showcase their evolving sound.
“There comes a time where you outgrow just emulating your heroes, and you kind of want to just make your own sound, and I think this is definitely our record for that.”
It also marks the first time they’ve worked with a producer, Juno award-
“They want to take their band to the next level, and they’ve got drive.”
ERIC RATZ RECORDING PRODUCER
winner Eric Ratz.
Throughout his more than two-decade career, Ratz has worked with some of Canada’s biggest hard rock acts, including Billy Talent, Danko Jones, Monster Truck and Cancer Bats. The seasoned producer has watched Panda’s songwriting mature over the past few years — he mixed their last record — and says she has both a powerful voice and intuition in the studio.
“She wants success,” Ratz adds. “They want to take their band to the next level, and they’ve got drive.”
Enough drive to potentially propel them into mainstream consciousness.
Panda, who grew up in Mississauga and now lives in downtown Toronto, says the group is aiming for another U.S. tour next year, and they’re hoping to tour Europe for the first time this spring.
It’ll mean lengthy stints on the road, with lots of nights spent sleeping on floors to save cash. “We have to fill our bellies with food and fill our van with gas,” Panda explains.
As Diemonds has grown their fan base, they’ve started opening for larger acts — their jam-packed touring schedule even included an appearance on this year’s KISS Kruise in Miami — but Panda says some of those gigs actually come with a smaller pay check. “The bigger the band you open for, the less you get paid, because the exposure is more vast and valuable.”
But she says that’s all part of the package. “If we get a room with water backstage that’s separate from the crowd, we’re beyond stoked. That’s a luxury. We’re still paying our dues every day.”
It’s a far cry from the life her Indian parents expected she’d have in Canada. Panda’s older sister works at a bank, and her parents, now retired, worked for Ontario Hydro and the Peel District School Board. Panda herself went to Ryerson University for journalism, graduating in 2008, but her heart belongs to rock ’n’ roll. “My life pretty much revolves around making the wheels turn on the band,” she says.
Panda notes her mother actually considered a career in the music business but ended up going a different route.
“She was going to be a playback singer for Bollywood tracks in India, but she chose more of a normal, expected path for a nice Indian woman. I kind of did the exact opposite.”
You can hear the excitement in her voice when she talks about the big things in store for her band in 2015.
“I know it’s like the calm before the storm,” she says.