Calgary band re-releasing music on 10-year anniversary of Brentwood killings

It’s been a decade since five young Calgarians were killed at a Brentwood house party, and family and friends are still trying to heal.

Tributes honouring their lives can be seen throughout the city, and now they can be heard in music.

Music written by two of the victims, Zackariah Rathwell and Josh Hunter, is being re-released on Monday, April 15, 2024 — the 10-year anniversary of their passing.

The pair’s former bandmates Kyle Tenove and Barry Mason, say the original album — Goodnight Icarus — was released mere days before the tragic events of April 15, 2014.

The musical makings are one of many tributes to Rathwell, Hunter, Jordan Segura, Kaiti Perras, and Lawrence Hong, who are remembered as the Brentwood Five.

The Quinterra Legacy Garden, an interactive musical garden and performance space, was completed in 2020 by Parks Foundation and families of the five to reflect the “hope, possibility, creativity and the life-affirming qualities that each of our five amazing children embodied.”

There are also a number of scholarships honouring the individuals at the University of Calgary.

Tenove, who met Rathwell and Hunter at Bishop Carroll High School, told CityNews on the 10th anniversary of his friends’ deaths that the trio was inseparable.

“I found out on the morning of the 15th. It’s unimaginable. It’s kind of hard to describe because it’s just like your whole body shuts down,” he recalled. “What if I had gone to the party? What if I had done this, or that? You can’t change any of it unfortunately. But they’re a part of me no matter what.”

Rathwell was the vocalist in the band, Mason played lead guitar, Hunter was the drummer, and Tenove was the bass player. He says it is their music that has helped him heal.

“Every year on this day — the 15th of April, I usually listen to the EP at home or in my car because it was only available on CD,” Tenove said. “But now, remastering the EP to put it on streaming for the first time, that’s kind of almost like evolved my ritual. Now it’s like well I can listen to it anywhere and people are reaching out and saying ‘Oh, it’s so great to finally hear this,’ because a lot of people didn’t have that CD.”

But, coping with the loss of his friends and band members took a huge toll on Tenov’s life.

“The thing that helped me was the support of the community and everything, but it was also Josh’s parents, Barclay Hunter and Kelly Hunter. They launched a not for profit music [organization], which I’m also a part of,” he said. “It dealt with helping emerging artists and doing music for good. So instead of staying in that moment, we put our energy into helping others and moving forward in their name.”

Rathwell, Hunter, Segura, Perras, and Hong were fatally stabbed by Matthew de Grood, who was found to be suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia and found not criminally responsible for the deaths in 2016.

Tenov says life would have been much different if his friends Zach and Josh were alive today.

“We would have been touring the world. That would be my dream. I think we had great songs. We had a whole bunch of other songs that we never recorded that you know, I think the second album would have been really exciting,” he said. “I still play with Barry Mason all the time and the bond that I have with him, I think the four of us would have retained that some bond through thick and thin.”

De Grood is now reportedly living at an unknown Calgary group home.