Viet Cong: Matthew Flegel, Scott "Monty" Munro, Michael Wallace, Danny Christiansen. Photo by Jared Sych.

Matt Flegel and Monty Munro were staying with a guy named Ziggy in Wetzlar, Germany, when they started talking about starting a new band. It was 2011, and the Calgary natives were touring as part of singer/songwriter Chad VanGaalen’s live act; both men had previously been “side guys” in other indie-rock groups—Flegel played bass and sang in Women, Munro was a guitarist in Lab Coast—and they had several ideas floating around. But they didn't act on them. A few months later, their friend and Women guitarist Christopher Reimer died in his sleep. At the time, both Munro and Flegel had been talking to him about collaborating on new projects. It was wake up call. 

“It was like, ‘Shit, we're going to die, fuck,'" says the 32-year-old Flegel. "'Let's do something before it ends.’” So they recruited Women drummer Mike Wallace, along with guitarist Danny Christiansen, who was playing in a Black Sabbath cover band alongside Flegel and Wallace, and began toiling in a jam space. 

While it's easy to simply brand Viet Cong as “ex-Women,” this quartet is more enigmatic. Their tour-only cassette from last year features crooning post-punk vocals, distant-sounding harmonies a la Nuggets-era psychedelia, noise-addled punk, and Blade Runner-style instrumentals. (Mexican Summer is set to reissue the tape soon.) And their forthcoming proper debut album—recorded at a barn-turned-studio in rural Ontario with Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh and due out in the second half of this year—boasts elaborately constructed arrangements that span a diverse soundscape. Viet Cong do many things, and they do it all very well. (Listen to a rough mix of an expansive new track called "Bunker Buster" above.)

Flegel and Munro say the band's biggest test thus far was when they all stuffed into a Toyota Echo for seven weeks for a tour across North America last year opening for fellow Canadian art rockers Freak Heat Waves. Long-term tour chemistry is not necessarily a given—a fact that Flegel knows all too well, considering he made headlines alongside his brother Pat when the two brawled onstage at a 2010 Women show. But Viet Cong got through the tour unscathed, and then worked together to write and record the upcoming album.

I talked with Flegel and Munro via Skype as they drank beers in Munro’s Calgary basement, aka Viet Cong’s makeshift studio. They’d both just gotten off work from their day jobs—Flegel doing flooring, Munro delivering cupcakes.

Pitchfork: You mentioned that the first big Viet Cong tour last year was a test for the band, were there any hiccups along the way?

Matt Flegel: Generally it was OK. There was 10 days of total bleakness, though. Just total desperate failing. We definitely didn't have a plan, no money, it was a last-minute tour that we were asked to go on.

Monty Munro: But it wasn’t bad. Danny and Flegel slept in the car, and me and Mike slept outside on the grass from Texas through New Mexico. 

MF: By the second day, I knew that anytime we stopped the car, Danny was jerking off in the bathroom—no matter where it was or what had happened.

MM: This feature should be called "Viet Cong: Hard Truths for Danny". [laughs]

Pitchfork: Obviously, you’re going to be associated with Women. How do you guys feel about that?

MF: I'm OK with it, as long as people aren't expecting us to sound like that band. 

Pitchfork: Matt, you and your brother Pat infamously fought onstage while touring with Women, how are you guys getting along these days?

MF: There were some issues there that were fairly public, and he got through that—he hit some lows and hit some highs and evened out. He's doing really good right now. Other than those couple of shitty days, we've never hated each other.

Pitchfork: Is it refreshing at all to be in a band where none of your bandmates are members of your family?

MF: Yeah, I guess so; it's definitely nice to not have any blood family in the band. When I talk to my parents from the road, they're not like, "Are you looking after Pat? Is Pat doing OK?" They don't even ask if I'm all right because they already know I'm all right.

Pitchfork: You have two records finished already. Do you have plans to keep recording? 

MF: Yeah, that's what we've been doing. Especially in the winter in Calgary, [recording] keeps you sane. It's one of the things where we'll work on music for a few hours, and I'll go home and feel OK about the day and just fall asleep.

MM: In disappointment? 

MF: Yeah, just dreaming of the noose. [laughs]