By Staff | May 6, 2026

Photo credit: Michael Aaron Keith @renegaderockphoto

Mean Bikini is a Canadian band known for blending hardcore, skate punk, and queer rage into a sound that is both pointed and punishingly aggressive. Centering their identity on a community-focused "do it together" ethos, the band actively works to eliminate barriers between themselves and their audience during live performances. Their album, This Ain’t Gonna End Well..., tackles heavy topics like political unrest and mental health as a way to unify listeners who may feel marginalized. Comprising Ashley Gelaude (drums), Milli Lyman (vocals), Josh Marcellin (guitar), and Laurie Storrie (bass), the group overcomes the challenge of living in different towns by using a highly collaborative, surgical approach to songwriting.

Your band has been described as pointed, unapologetic, viciously fun, and punishingly aggressive. How do you balance that intensity with the sense of inclusivity you bring to your live shows?

Josh: Going to see a band can be a pain in the ass. You’ve got to leave your couch and your cats, go out into the night, stand around for hours. It’s tiring. You’ve got to go to work in the morning. The music is loud and the beer is expensive. So I feel that we owe anyone who shows up to see us, whether it’s 30 people or 300, everything we’ve got. Our priority has always been to eliminate the barrier between us and the crowd. We’re in the crowd. You’re on the stage. We’re doing this thing together. Live music matters. It’s easy to feel isolated and to spend way too long looking at scary shit on your phone. But when you’re in a crowd, moving with people, you’re not alone.

This Ain’t Gonna End Well… tackles heavy themes like mental health and political unrest. What pushed you to go deeper lyrically on this full-length compared to your earlier EPs?

Milli: we've always, since the bands inception, tried to use our music and our shows as a means to unify people, especially people on the margins of society who get beat down the most by the ways in which the world seems to work. With our full length, having 13 songs to spread messaging through was very helpful in that it gave us more space to work. It also allowed for more opportunity for collaboration lyrically and content wise within the band. Another aspect is that in the time between our first releases and our full length, the world has taken many more twists and turns. It seems each day we are met with some type of new horror and abhorrent injustice so there was lots of fuel for the flames so to speak.

You’ve toured extensively across Canada in a short time — what have those long runs on the road taught you about yourselves as a band?

Laurie: I like how humbling it can be. We’ve put in so much work on the west coast that we’ve gotten used to packed shows where everyone is singing along. On tour you roll into a small town on the other side of the country and there’s only 15 people at the show and nobody knows who you are. Suddenly there’s no friends or nostalgia to rely on and just like the first show you ever played, you’re at ground zero fighting to earn the attention and respect of the crowd.

Ashley: No amount of preparation will ever guarantee things will move smoothly. It’s worth laying the ground work, for sure. But also important to keep space and calm for things to go sideways. We faced an alarming amount of crisis at the end of our cross Canada tour last year, and I think we all did the absolute best we could in the wake of that, which was actually very impressive. I sincerely think we did great. The worst can happen, save space for it and use it to bond with the people around you.

How did recording at Rain City Recorders shape the sound and energy of this album compared to your previous releases?

Laurie: The difference is night and day. Like any new band we started out broke and knew we needed something out there to demonstrate what we sounded like, but the first two EPs were demo quality at best. We were lucky to be able to record them ourselves in our home studios but with limited experience and gear we couldn’t capture the spirit of our live show. As we were writing This Ain’t Gonna End Well we knew we were ready to put out a “real album”. Jesse Gander at Rain City has put out the best records in Canadian punk rock, including For Everyone by Brass. It was particularly nice to go into the studio and say “hey, that album that you recorded is exactly the energy we are going for”. Jesse’s assistant Mariessa McLeod did most of the recording and Jesse did the mixing, the two of them did a flawless job and for the first time we had recordings that actually felt like Mean Bikini.

Your music blends hardcore, skate punk, and queer rage; how intentional is that mix, and how has it evolved over time?

Its always been hard for us to pinpoint our sound when someone asks for it to be described, so this mix is kind of our best way to describe it by breaking it down into pieces. We never set out to necessarily sound like anything in particular, but each of us in the band draws inspiration from different places while having overlapping musical interests . Although the mix isn't intentional, we feel we have found our own distinct sound and it's been easy to stay true to that when writing.

You’ve shared stages with bands like DOA and Fucked Up - what have you taken away from playing alongside such influential acts?

Josh: It’s only been a few years since we played our first show in my garage, so it’s been cool to go from the very DIY energy of our early days to seeing how living legends like DOA operate. Honestly, the main takeaway is that the bigger bands are super sweet humans. I think that goes a long way. I’ve seen how these lifers still take the time to be kind to a band like us–still early in our career–and everyone else in the room. And they respect people’s time. They show up, they’re nice, they absolutely kill it on stage–and that’s their job. Those are traits we try our best to emulate; and I think that has opened as many doors for us as anything musical we’ve ever done.

Between vehicle breakdowns and writing across geographic distance, what’s been the toughest challenge you’ve faced, and how did you push through it?

Laurie: Challenges are exciting (maybe not breakdowns) A skill that has come from us all living in different towns is our ability to be really surgical about writing songs. For instance Josh will send a new riff over, and instead of learning on the fly in a jam space, I can sit down in my studio and try a million different things until the right one hits. Sure I long for a world where we could jam weekly over a case of beer, but in a weird way, practicing along to the album or demos also makes us more consistent as a band.

Ashley: I will second Laurie on our ability to create together from afar. Our recent album was born exclusively from this process and we are so proud of what we were able to achieve. So much so that we trust this system wholeheartedly moving forward. The love we share for one another outside of music allows us to push through. Josh, calm and logical. Laurie, stern and soft. Milli, imaginative and sweet as pie. Me, tender and particular. We are all extremely different people who let our love for music and friendship push us through everything. It’s romance. Mean bikini internals are romance. Never easy, always worth it.

As you grow your audience and play bigger festivals, how do you stay true to your DIY ethos while trying to make a broader impact?

Laurie: DIY is a bit of a funny term; to us it means “take charge of your own trajectory” but so frequently it’s misinterpreted as “don’t ever accept help”. We’re so lucky in Western Canada to be surrounded by countless organizers who are doing amazing things that are aligned with our morals and the paths we take to uphold them. Community is at the center of everything we do, and I often feel that “Do it together” would be a better way to describe us than “do it yourself”

With that said there is a shift as the audiences get larger, the stages get higher, and the drives get longer. It always breaks my heart when I'm at a show and the only time I see the band is when they are on stage. As bands grow I think they have to be more intentional about how they interact with the audience. As much impact as the music makes, the hand shakes, hugs, and heart to heart conversations are the moments where the real connections are made. For us running our own merch table, being at the venue from doors til close, and getting in the crowd for every other band helps break down the “us and them” mentality.

Anyone you'd like to thank for their support?

We would like to thank our label Outhouse Records for their continued support of us Aswell as continuing to uplift DIY punk in general, all the Comox Valley kids (and adults) for keeping making our hometown scene like no other, and to everyone who’s taken the time to come to a show, buy our record, listen to our tunes and come to chat with us at a show. NOW GO START A BAND.

Mean Bikini is:

Ashley Gelaude( she / her ) drums
Milli Lyman (they/them) vocals
Josh Marcellin (he/him) guitar
Laurie Storrie (they/them) bass

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