Northern Dial Artist Profile

Three Days Grace

Norwood, Ontario, Canada

Three Days Grace grew out of the small-town Ontario band Groundswell, formed by Adam Gontier, Brad Walst and Neil Sanderson in the Norwood area before the musicians regrouped under their current name in the late 1990s. After signing with Jive, the 2003 self-titled debut turned the band's tense, emotionally direct post-grunge into an international rock-radio breakthrough. "I Hate Everything About You" became the signature early hit, while the album established a formula built around heavy guitar hooks, blunt emotional conflict and choruses designed for large rooms rather than underground scenes.

The 2006 album One-X expanded the band's reach with "Animal I Have Become," "Pain" and "Never Too Late," songs that connected especially strongly with listeners drawn to the catalogue's writing about isolation, addiction and survival. Life Starts Now and Transit of Venus extended the Adam Gontier era before he left the group in 2013. Matt Walst, Brad Walst's brother and the singer of My Darkest Days, stepped in as frontman for Human, Outsider and Explosions, allowing Three Days Grace to remain one of North America's most consistent mainstream-rock acts through a major lineup change.

The band entered another unusual chapter when Gontier returned alongside Walst rather than replacing him, creating a dual-frontman lineup for 2025's Alienation. The reunion produced a new run of No. 1 rock-radio singles, including "Mayday" and "Kill Me Fast." By 2026, Three Days Grace had scored 20 No. 1s on Billboard's U.S. Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, and "I Hate Everything About You" and "Animal I Have Become" had both passed one billion Spotify streams, making them the first Canadian band with two songs in the platform's Billions Club. That late-career resurgence reinforces their place as one of the most internationally durable Canadian hard-rock bands of the 2000s era.