FIST BIOGRAPHY ~ 1979 to 2007

Formed in 1979 by Ottawa-born Ron Chenier, the singer/guitarist recruited players and began honing their chops doing small clubs in and around the Toronto area. The band quickly graduated to the 'B circuit', touring the eastern-Canadian/US areas for the next year and a half.

The group took their heavy approach to music into the studios and cut the independently released ROUND ONE in the spring of '79. Raucous and raunchy, the band's sound was dominated by raw guitars with little in-studio tampering. It was produced by Chenier’s brother Norman and completed on a proverbial ‘shoe-string’ budget. The songs "Too Late", "Madness" and "Who Did You Love" showed the band's penchant for writing hard driving, simple, yet complex songs.

Fist returned to the road and toured practically every corner of the eastern half of the continent for the next year. The band was signed to a deal with A&M Records in the summer of 1980 and quickly returned to the studio. They emerged from Toronto's Amber Studios that fall and released HOT SPIKES for which the band hired George Semkiw to engineer and produce. The only difference between HOT SPIKES and its predecessor was that the new album caressed them gently. Backed by songs like the anthemic "Rock n Roll Suicide" and lead-off track "Money", a song about the hustle and bustle of society's drive for materialism, HOT SPIKES demonstrated a maturity, harnessed by Semkiw's experience. Other notable cuts included "Lord I Miss You" and "Teenage Love Affair", intended to garner the band radio play. The tours continued, with FIST seeing practically every province and state over the following year.

Then the band regrouped, and with a new release called FLEET STREET in '81. "Double Or Nothing" again showcased Chenier's talent for writing slick, driving guitar riffs, while "Thunder In Rock" was easily the year's best tune on the radio waves. With the clever addition of a sax solo, "Thunder" is probably most synonymous with Fist's music, if any song is at all. However, other killer cuts included "Open The Gates", the title track and "Evil Cold". Backed by the album's success, the group took the show on the road again, this time playing outdoor festivals with the likes of Heart, Motor Head, Krokus and the Scorpions. Despite the record's success though, critics of the day were still finding it hard to accept heavy metal as a legitimate form of music.

The band took some time off following the tour's end in 1982 and didn't re-emerge until IN THE RED in '83. FIST toured and then went back into the recording studio in 1984 to record the album DANGER ZONE. This album was released on Cobra Records, an independent label which specialized in the metal genre. Their signing of Fist seemed a marriage made in heaven. But despite the harnessed intensity of numbers like the title track, the album failed to garner enough interest in the group to keep them together, and they called it quits in '86.

The band got back together in '91 for a series of dates on the Ontario circuit, which led to a full reunion and a new album in 1993 called REIGN OF TERROR. Released on Magada Records, Fist again had landed a deal with an independent metal label and embarked on a criss-cross tour of the continent. In 1995 FIST released a second album on Magada Records called Loud Loud Loud but this time there was no tour support from Magada Records Canada.

From 1995 to 2005 Fist took a break but during this time there was a great resurgent of Classic Rock music, so Chenier ( Ronch ) wrote a new album titled Bolted Door. The album was released in May 2006 as an Indie on Ronch Music Canada, only available from the Fist website, www.myofist.com. Bolted Door received great reviews and this motivated Chenier to write another album for 2008.

Another Fist Biography 1979 to 2007
By Dan Brisebois

Though Fist was by no means a household name, they were known in the circles of head-bangers as deliverers of straight forward, but well-crafted metal and the occasional melodic number toned down to show their versatility. But even their ballads didn't bring tears to your eyes. Heavy metal has always been an acquired taste. And though non listeners would have trouble understanding this, it's generally harder to make a good metal song than it is to program some software and come up with one of today's 'hits'. It should also be noted that heavy metal enjoyed a short stay atop the 'flavour of the day' ladder, and Canadian acts in particular found it tough gaining the respect some of them truly deserved. Aside from a few other Canadian rock bands, there weren't many others teaching Head-banging 101. And in a school so socially isolated, Fist is truly in a class all their own.

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