With guitarists C.C. Diemond and Daniel Dekay to
Tommy Cee on bass and Aiden Tanquada on drums,
Panda is all about the party on Diemonds’ debut fulllength, In the Rough, to their 2012 release, The Bad
Pack. The band has supported Doro Pesch, Slash and
Megadeth to holding their own with sets at Montreal’s
Heavy MTL festival. But Panda feels that Diemonds’
most enriching experience to date is one that correlates
with her Indian ethnicity.
“India was surreal,” she says of performing in Shillong, a
remote area of the Meghalaya state. “Bollywood
dominates and it’s hard to infiltrate live entertainment,
but once you do, there’s a good response.”
Diemonds made their mark as the first female-fronted
band to perform in Shillong. The band’s grandiose
arrival was supported by the same outdoor stage
Scorpions played two years prior, billboards all over
town and a “shitload of people.”
Yet, Panda recalls only two women in an audience
surrounded by a “weird atmosphere” due to political
unrest between the city and its neighbour, Tibet. Guards
armed with AK47s traveled with Diemonds to every
location, including the mosh pit, where alternative
dancing to heavy music was foreign for locals.
“I had to get out of the pit as soon as I felt the nose
of an AK47 hit my back,” Panda says. “We weren’t in
Kansas anymore.”
Despite the risks, Panda says that touring the country
“legitimized the band” to her parents, who are natives
of Bombay. They didn’t immediately embrace their
daughter’s career, but their values are present in Panda’s
every motive.
“I saw my parents work themselves to the bone, and I
think that has completely had an impact on how much
time, dedication and effort I have towards everything I
do,” she says of household values.
As her parents encouraged her to find a career, Panda
studied journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto
with hopes of applying her interests to a full-time job.
But with her mind on the stage, it was during this time
that Panda discovered a passion for spicy food and feisty
music.
She worked consistently, and her favourite part-time
gig was at Taste The Fourth Sense, a store with over 200
types of hot sauce. Lydia Taylor, its co-owner, is a
Juno-award winning musician and founder of the Lydia
& Taylor band, a group Panda picked up while
shopping for vinyl and Guns N Roses cassette tapes at
her local Value Village.
The vocalist insists that you “can’t deny” the aesthetic of
the band’s album cover for Appetite For Destruction.
The brash imagery of a cross, adorned with skulls of
each band member, left a permanent mark on the
vocalist, inspiring her second tattoo at age 17: a pair of
black pistols on her upper left arm.
This physical tribute is mirrored in Panda’s goal to
“bring the fun back to rock and roll.” Diemonds’ raw,
sonic approach is driven by various sub-genres and has
evolved stylistically on The Bad Pack is with tracks like
“Take On The Night” and “Get The Fuck Outta Here.”
“Our personalities are a big part of the band, which
is something that was lost at some point when it was
Ace, Peter, Gene and Paul,” she says of a similar bond
Diemonds and KISS share. “It’s like a big family in the
ge nre that we play, which is kind of sleazy, hard rock.
There’s a whole new wave and we’re proud to be a part
of it.”
Being in an underground scene of resurgence has earned
Diemonds high rank on an international scale. With
their latest album released in Japan to performing at
South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and the
band is crossing borders to bring their signature sound
to a diverse audience through one passion-fueled goal.
“When we’re on stage, we’re bleeding for you,” Panda
says of her greatest high. “When the crowd reacts, they
put out 110 per cent of the energy we have given.”
Panda isn’t in the newsroom, but she’s telling another
story about following her dreams. When Diemonds
became her focus, she stopped worrying about
expectations, income and monotony.
“We aren’t animals in a man made world,” she says. “We
have desires beyond a piece of paper or what money can
ever be quenched by.” With a Canadian tour this spring,
writing a new album with Diemonds and scourging
vintage stores for classic albums and denim jackets,
Panda is going to need lots of water – and it’s not
because of the Habanero sauce.