Medical Pilot has a name for what they do, and it sounds like a contradiction. Happy Hardcore. Guitars heavy enough to rattle the floors that carry melodies a room full of strangers shout back, aimed at what few bands are able to touch on as eloquently. Burnout. Insecurity. Grief that may never sort itself out. Fifteen years in, the Edmonton four-piece has stopped pretending any of it resolves. Things don't get easier. You keep going anyway.

That’s why their shows feel like nothing else. Fifteen years of Canadian stages have made Medical Pilot the band that people bring their friends to as proof of a living music scene, and they’ve shared tour bills with Wheatus, Youth Fountain, Protest The Hero, PUP, and Calling All Captains. Every member sings, and front-of-house engineers are under standing orders to mix them like a boy band. Their instrumentation underneath plays with the tension and release of a classic hardcore record. Pop songwriting instincts at post-hardcore volume, where most bands pick one or the other. 

Dexter Twardzik started the band as a teenager and has kept it running through every scene shift and shutdown since. Their 2022 full-length debut “Primary Colours” was the first record where the writing caught up to the live show, closing on "Julie" and a line that still works as a mission statement: 

"Everybody's broken somehow / They haven't given up, so why should you?" 

Two years later, they did something most bands would not. Medical Pilot pulled every early EP off every platform, permanently, and recorded the songs again from scratch as “Halfway Home”. Not because of a rights issue or dispute, but because they had gotten good enough to hear what the songs were supposed to be, and were not willing to let a younger and more naive version of themselves stand as the only one on record. It’s the kind of decision that tells you how the band operates: perfection in craft. Even the back catalogue is not exempt. 

"Gums" is the first new Medical Pilot song in four years and the most emotionally potent piece they have written yet, in every sense. It’s about the initial stretch of grief, when the only relief is running yourself into the ground hard enough that there's no room left to think. It's about looking ahead and seeing what the same loss did to people you know, and realizing that what it can do to someone is almost scarier than experiencing it yourself. 

What will it take from you?

But in its final minute, the song shifts, and it becomes about catching yourself before you get too lost. About not letting grief erode the wonder, love, and innocence inside yourself. It’s the first single off their upcoming third studio album, recorded with Stew Kirkwood at Department 9 Studios and at The Living Room in Edmonton.

Every scene produces bands that are loud and bands that are catchy, yet most of them are gone in three years. Medical Pilot has been doing both for fifteen, in rooms that belonged to active legends like Protest the Hero and PUP, and they have gotten frighteningly good at it. They are the best live band in Edmonton, and they’re about to stop being the city's best-kept secret.