My Darkest Days released their self-titled debut on September 21, 2010. Its first single, “Porn Star Dancing,” introduced the Canadian band with some established names beside them: Chad Kroeger contributed vocals, Zakk Wylde played guitar, and a version featuring Ludacris added a rap verse to the collaboration.
Singer and guitarist Matt Walst, drummer Doug Oliver and bassist Brendan McMillan had started the band in Norwood, Ontario, where they grew up. Walst had an unusually close view of the profession through his older brother Brad, bassist and co-founder of Three Days Grace. That connection offered a firsthand look at the work involved before Matt began recording his own band’s debut.
Making the album took three years. In a 2010 interview with Planet Ill, Walst described sessions fitted around Kroeger and producer Joey Moi’s other commitments, including Nickelback’s Dark Horse. The band would travel west to record, then return home and reconsider the songs before another session. Moi could spend days or weeks on one vocal, and Walst credited those repeated takes with teaching him to hear and develop harmonies.
Walst also arrived with a specific idea for a collaboration. He had made hip-hop with a friend in high school, using an MPC and an eight-track recorder, and wanted a rapper on the album. When he suggested that to Kroeger, the producer offered to contact his friend Ludacris. “Porn Star Dancing” connected that earlier interest with the band’s rock songwriting.
Getting the guests together for the video required another kind of coordination. Guitarist Sal Costa told Noisecreep that the original plan called for a strip-club performance in New York, but the musicians’ schedules made it difficult to arrange. With two days remaining before the shoot and flights still unbooked, the production moved to Las Vegas. Ludacris was already there filming another video, Wylde was in Los Angeles, and Kroeger was on vacation. The band went through three directors in two days while looking for someone who could assemble a local crew quickly. Brendan Kyle Cochrane took the job, filming inside the Hard Rock Resort’s Vanity Nightclub and on the roof, with additional shots captured from helicopters.
The album also gave Walst room for material drawn from relationships. “Every Lie” and “Like Nobody Else” used autobiographical experiences, placing more personal writing alongside the party songs. Another guest appearance came through “Come Undone,” a Duran Duran cover featuring Jessie James. Those songs expanded the picture of a band whose introduction had centered on the deliberately sexual setting of “Porn Star Dancing.”
My Darkest Days received a JUNO nomination for New Group of the Year in 2011. Looking back in a 2013 interview with Arthur, Walst singled out “Porn Star Dancing” as a favorite because of the success it had made possible and the musicians who had agreed to participate. “For a band from Norwood, getting gigantic artists in on this was flattering and overwhelming,” he said.
