Sure, playing 350 shows over the past three years all over the world was pretty impressive. Opening for The Who in front of 50,000 people? Not bad for a couple of loudmouths from the quaint, quiet valley town of Dundas, Ontario. And, sure, winning the Juno Award for Breakthrough Group of the Year made the parents proud. But of all the accomplishments that Hamilton-based power trio The Dirty Nil have ticked off their bucket list since coughing up their debut single, “Fuckin’ Up Young,” in 2011, nothing tops the honour that was bestowed upon them back on March 23, 2015.

“If you go on Reddit,” drummer Kyle Fisher begins, “a video that we had on our Instagram made the top listing of the WTF page! We were staying at a hotel in East Dallas—which we later found out was not a good place to stay. The only room available was a smoking room with that shitty plastic covering on the mattress. And it was a weird night there, with police and drug dealers out in the halls. But when we woke up in the morning, and opened the door, there was a huge, long trail of ants going from one end of the hallway to the other end!”

Like any group of true artists, The Dirty Nil channel trauma into their music… and on the band’s second album, Master Volume, the harrowing experience of seeing the inside of America’s most disgusting hotels, night in and night out, manifests itself in the song “Super 8.” “I’m halfway to hell/ It’s called Super 8 Motel,” Luke Bentham sings, stretching out the words with the palpable pain of someone who’s struggling to catch some precious between-gigs shut-eye on a mattress riddled with bed bugs and stains of dubious origin. But for The Dirty Nil, the effects of non-stop touring go way beyond translating one-star Trip Advisor reviews into song.

The Dirty Nil didn’t just spend the past few years on the road in support of their debut album, Higher Power and companion collection of early singles, Minimum R&B. They spent of much of it opening for—and, more importantly, studying—the greats: Against Me, Billy Talent, Alexisonfire. They’re bands who, like the Nil, cut their teeth for years on the punk circuit playing the dingiest of dives, but now find themselves playing arenas and headlining festivals. With Master Volume, The Dirty Nil are ready to make the same leap—not by polishing their sound for radio, but by bulking it up to fill the stadiums and open fields of their most vivid rock ‘n’ roll fantasies.

Says Luke, “I think the experience of playing with bands like Against Me—bands that can put on a proper fucking rock show—and seeing what works in a big space definitely crept into the way we think about songs, and how to sound powerful. A lot of the times, when you play blitzkrieg-fast, it has a way of sounding awesome in a club. But when you’re playing in a giant space with some sound guy who’s never seen you before mixing you, it can be a roll of the dice.”