In late summer 2024, Diamond Weapon frontman Louis Tentsos was standing in a jam space in Toronto, singing gibberish over a new song he didn’t have lyrics for yet. He was hunting for a melody. Then, half for fun, he started singing the words to “Adam’s Song” by Blink 182 — and the lyrics, a song about loss he hadn’t thought about in years, hit him hard. He’d just buried his Uncle Nick — cancer, July 2024 — and for nearly twelve months before that, it felt like he’d been to a funeral or a memorial every month.
“That’s what kind of pushed me into writing about mortality and loss,” he says. “It really resonated with me after what I had just gone through.”
The song in question became “Undermining the Butcher,” and the EP it belongs to — “Letters from the Flood” — drops April 24th on City Set on a Hill Records, a new boutique label based out of York, Ontario. It’s the Toronto post-hardcore outfit’s first new release in over two years.
Across its five tracks, “Letters from the Flood” works through mortality, memory, violence, guilt, mental illness, broken systems, and the widening cracks Louis kept seeing open up everywhere — in peers his own age who didn’t make it, in forests burning in places he loved, in his own life. Some of the people he lost that year went to addiction and suicide, others to illness or violence. “It’s like life kept tapping me on the shoulder and reminding me I wasn’t invincible,” he says. “And then I had to figure out what to do with that.”
Melodic post-hardcore built on trading vocals — Louis and Stephen Maclean pulling against each other, Marco Vani on bass and Jason Bradfield on drums holding the pace underneath. Story-first lyrics. RIYL: La Dispute, Touché Amoré, Defeater, Pianos Become the Teeth, Alexisonfire, Thrice.
Then the hiatus. Louis became a father and the band stepped back. Everyone peeled off. Jason went and lived in Mexico for a while — Louis says there was a stretch when they weren’t sure he was coming back. Marco started coaching youth hockey. Stephen buried himself in engineering and production work.
What eventually pulled everyone back was a target: NXNE in Toronto offered them a festival slot, and that gave the band something concrete to return for.
“To be honest, I’m not sure if I was ready yet,” Louis says. “The first months with the baby still feel like a blur to this day and I’m not sure if I ever processed it. That said, being on that stage really felt good.”
When they started jamming again, something had shifted. “It feels weird to say about a band of dudes in their 30s and 40s, but there felt like there was more maturity in the room when we came back. I think everyone in the band really used that downtime to find themselves.”
Fatherhood also rewrote a song. “She’s Into Malakas, Dino Bravo” was written during his partner’s pregnancy, but Louis tracked the vocals after the kid arrived. The song is about finding someone who brings out the best version of you, who lets you be your actual self. Recording those vocals after the baby was born, the words carried more weight than they had a few months earlier. “There just seemed to be more riding on it when a baby is involved,” he says. “The idea that it’s not just us now, if that makes sense?”
“Letters from the Flood” is the first Diamond Weapon release produced, mixed, and mastered entirely by the band — Louis handled it himself. Drums and vocals tracked at Lynx Music, guitars and bass at Primal Note Studios, both in Toronto. Everything got arranged in a room with all four of them together. No remote sessions, no fragmented writing. For Louis, that part isn’t negotiable.
“There just seems to be an authenticity in writing in a room together that I find cannot be replicated remotely,” he says. “While some of the grunt work does happen alone — maybe coming up with riffs, or in my case writing lyrics — arranging everything and putting the finishing touches, for us at least, has to be done in a room together. These are songs that we might play for the next 3, 4, or 5 years. So, before we move forward with it, everyone in the room has to be able to look each other in the eye and say that they are happy with it. If everyone does, then it’s good to go.”
Ask Louis about the Toronto post-hardcore scene and he lights up. Judgement were on the way to getting huge before they called it quits.
Diamond Weapon have shared stages or toured with Conversation, Napoleon, Dammit Goldie, Jenafur, Junko Daydream, and Roldex Darko. “Post-hardcore in particular seems to be having a renaissance in Toronto,” he says. “The scene is thriving again, and it’s really fun to see and be a part of.”
“As much as these songs came from a dark place,” Louis says, “they reminded me that surviving anything — grief, fear, even joy — comes from connection. From the people who keep showing up.”
“Letters from the Flood” is out April 24th via City Set on a Hill Records.
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