cleopatrick: Two Friends From Cobourg Who Learned Rock From AC/DC

Photo: Stefan Brending (2eight) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2023_Rock_im_Park_-_Cleopatrick_-_by_2eight_-_9SC6763.jpg

Some bands meet through ads or at college. cleopatrick go back further than that. According to Wikipedia and Kerrang!, Luke Gruntz and Ian Fraser have been friends since they were four years old in Cobourg, Ontario. They got into music at around eight, when they first heard AC/DC. In their teens they started recording their own songs. The result is a two-piece that hits like a full band, and five of their songs are on U-Rock®'s WURN-dB Underground playlist: "daphne did it," "sanjake," "GOOD GRIEF," "chromeo" and "youth."

Doing it themselves

The duo is lean. Wikipedia lists Gruntz on vocals, guitar and production and Fraser on drums and production, so the band produces its own records. Their releases have come out on their own label, Nowhere Special Recordings, starting with the debut EP 14, released on 14 February 2016.

The breakthrough came with "Hometown." Wikipedia says the single, released in 2017, peaked at No. 6 on the US Mainstream Rock chart. It came from their second EP, The Boys, released in June 2018. That summer they played their first festival, Lollapalooza in Chicago. In 2019 they took on many more, including 2000 Trees in England and Shaky Knees in Atlanta. The standalone single "sanjake," one of the playlist tracks, came out in March 2019.

Bummer and beyond

On 11 December 2020, Wikipedia records, cleopatrick released "Good Grief," the first single from their debut album. "THE DRAKE" followed in March 2021 and "FAMILY VAN" in April, along with the album announcement. Bummer came out on 4 June 2021.

The band then took the record across Europe in March 2022, including a show at London's Electric Ballroom. From April to May 2022 they supported fellow rock duo Royal Blood on a North American tour, which Loudwire reported when it was announced, and that August they played Reading and Leeds. The single "OK" arrived in August 2022, ahead of the five-song EP Doom that October.

Their second album took longer. According to Wikipedia, "HAMMER" came out on 1 November 2024 as the first single from Fake Moon, and "PLEASE" followed on 22 January 2025 along with the official announcement. Fake Moon was released on 14 March 2025.

The sound

Wikipedia notes that the band have been compared to Highly Suspect, Royal Blood, Arctic Monkeys and Catfish and the Bottlemen. They name AC/DC and Highly Suspect as their biggest influences, along with fellow Canadian alternative rock bands Zig Mentality and Ready the Prince. They also cite modern hip hop, both its production and its willingness to take musical risks.

That mix explains a lot. With two players there is nowhere to hide. cleopatrick lean on huge riffs, hard-hitting drums and production choices that owe as much to hip hop as to classic rock. On record, the duo's own production fills the space a bassist and second guitarist would normally take.

Five songs, one playlist

The five cleopatrick tracks on the WURN-dB Underground playlist cover several eras of the band. "sanjake" is the March 2019 standalone single. "GOOD GRIEF" opened the Bummer campaign in December 2020. "daphne did it," "chromeo" and "youth" round out a set that works as a crash course in how two friends from Cobourg turned an AC/DC habit into a career.

Why it matters on U-Rock®

cleopatrick are what U-Rock® is about. They are a band from a small Ontario town who put out their own records on their own label, built a following one EP at a time, and earned slots at Lollapalooza and Reading. They also landed a tour with Royal Blood. With five songs on the WURN-dB Underground playlist, they are one of its best-represented acts. Start with "youth" and work back.

U-Rock® play data: no plays logged in the BROADCAST or CORE histories (2026-07-02 to 2026-10-12). The band appears on the WURN-dB Underground Spotify playlist.

Sources 1. Wikipedia, "Cleopatrick" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatrick 2. Spotify, "WURN-dB Underground" playlist (embed) — https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/0bZ0fCQCL7IkKfqcQycsMI 3. Kerrang!, "Cleopatrick: best friends taking their blues-punk to new heights" — https://www.kerrang.com/cleopatrick-best-friends-taking-their-blues-punk-to-new-heights 4. Guitar World, "Cleopatrick's Luke Gruntz" — https://www.guitarworld.com/features/cleopatrick-luke-gruntz-bummer 5. Loudwire, "Royal Blood announce 2022 North American tour with Cleopatrick" — https://loudwire.com/royal-blood-2022-north-american-tour-cleopatrick/