White Zombie

Formed in the mid-80’s in New York City, White Zombie would become one of the most popular metal acts through the 90’s. Their sound was heavy but with a groove and songs inspired from horror authors like Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) to classic muscle cars and cult films like Blade Runner and Night of the Living Dead. Their most visible member, Rob Zombie (Robert Cummings, Jr.), was not only a musician, but a filmmaker as well, who over the course of the past two decades would go from directing the band’s videos to being a sought-after horror movie director in Hollywood. Even though the band has been broken up for over a decade, Rob went through the entirety of their old recordings and came up with a new boxed set called Let Sleeping Corpses Lie which is a five-disc collection of everything the band recorded.

You can tell Rob Zombie gets asked about a White Zombie reunion all the time because the first thing he says is how the set has a perfect title, “it’s pretty self-explanatory because I didn’t want everybody to think the box set was the beginning of something. I wanted everyone to realize it was the end of something… I am not big on revisiting the past. I like to move forward all the time. So whenever anything else would come up, this would go in the backburner. I had a little bit of window, and just knocked it out. And I also figured that, if not now, when? By waiting longer, CDs aren’t even going to exist, so there will be no box sets.” 

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Hollywood Undead

John Schlesinger said “Hollywood is an extraordinary kind of temporary place.” Robert DeNiro says he only goes to Los Angeles “when he gets paid for it.” Jay Leno said, “If God doesn’t destroy Hollywood Boulevard, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.” Slithering out of this cauldron like the rumored first cell from primordial soup is a band called Hollywood Undead.

If you haven’t heard of them yet, prepare to be blindsided. The day they created their MySpace profile, several thousand new users signed on. In one week they crested to the top of the MySpace music chart like a wave on the Santa Monica shore. Their first official album called “Swan Songs” was released Sep. 2 by (A&M/Octone Records). They consist of six members identified only by street aliases. Their music is a collision of hip-hop, metal, and rock and sounds like the Beastie Boy’s Licensed to Ill getting pistol whipped by Eminem.

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Black Label Society

Helping create the definition of heavy metal, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY continues to shape redefine themselves and there sound. From acoustic ballads, to shredding solos, to a community of brothers, these guys have become a people’s band. According to Nick Catanese (Guitar), “take Zeppelin and Sabbath and put them in a blender from hell, and you have Black Label.” The famed frontman, Zakk Wylde, and the “Evil Twin”(Cantanese), find themselves in a family that has been rooted with their band.

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Buckcherry

Buckcherry had a RIAA Gold debut album in 1999. The band went on hiatus in 2002. In 2005, they reformed with three new members; bassist Jimmy Ashhurst, drummer Xavier Muriel, and Guitarist Stevie D. In 2006, Buckcherry enjoyed renewed success with the album “15” garnering RIAA Platinum status and a Grammy nomination.Their newest offering is titled “Black Butterfly” and recently toured the U.S opening for KISS.

Maximum Ink: Can you tell us a little about where you are from? How did being from there influence you to become a musician?
Stevie D: Well, I’m from Chicago.. and I really don’t know that it had any influence on me becoming a musician as much as it did on what kind of musician I was going to be. There’s ALL types of music there but it’s mostly known worldwide for the blues. There’s few different sides to my playing, the blues and R&B side was influenced by Pete Cosey (Chess Records, Miles Davis, Earth, Wind & Fire) and my brother Gary Dacanay. The rock side was all the other people I grew up around and all the music they blasted in their cars and at parties

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Drown

Say what you will about America as it races towards the millennium, but the country is soft. Where else in the world does Matchbox 20 sell 10 million records? Where else have politically correctness and money-hungry lawyers made it hazardous to speak your mind? And politics being what they are, where else can a mockery of a sex scandal not cause a country to reassess their moral and ethical standards? Yes, America in the 20th century can’t boast the hardest of inhabitants. In fact, with hundreds of television stations, the Internet offering the world at our fingertips, and Domino’s promising a piping-hot pizza in “30-minutes-or-less,” we’ve got little reason to leave the house. In a world ruled by survival of the fittest, we could be doomed, but don’t tell that to Drown.

In a music industry seldom recognized for rational thinking, Drown—frontman Lauren, guitarist Patrick Sprawl, bassist Sean Demott and drummer Marco Forcone—have survived more adversity than any one band should have to face. They’ve proved they’re amongst the fittest, and Product of a Two Faced World is their double-fisted heart punch to an industry that’s stabbed them in the back a few too many times. With debut Hold on to the Hollow unveiled in 1994 by Elektra Records, and the following three years bogged down by bureaucracy, last year’s Product of a Two Faced World, the band’s sophomore release and first for Slipdisc/Mercury, provided vindication. “No more days putting faith where it doesn’t belong, I’ve been held down here for too goddamn long. Seen you all come and go and I’ve been led on. But I am still alive and I proved you wrong,” charges frontman Lauren in “1605 (for my suffering),” a crushing condemnation from a band that refuses to go away, let alone quietly.

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Fear Factory

If you’ve felt discouraged with Fear Factory’s direction in the last few years, Mechanize (Candlelight Records) will bring your faith back. The L.A. Industrial metal masters have put out a record that many will say is the revitalization of a legend. Fan-favorite Raymond Herrera has left to pursue playing with Arkaea (E1/Century). He has since been replaced with Gene Hoglan (Dark Angel, Death, Dethklok). All the more exciting is the reunion with Dino Cazares. He’s back after nearly a 6 year hiatus from the group. Chris Fox interviewed Mr. Cazares, emphasizing the experimental side of Fear Factory…Don’t miss FEAR FACTORY The Rave in Milwaukee on Saturday, May 29.

The metal genre has such a vast array of sub-genres and categories that it is truly impossible to define a band with one term these days. FEAR FACTORY thrives on this grey area of metal, Dino Cazares explains, “we experiment so much that it is hard to put any kind of label on what we do. Death to industrial… the best way [to describe it] would be FEAR FACTORY. We are proud to be a band that helped define a bit of this genre.”

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Great White

Emerging from the 80’s Los Angeles hard rock scene, GREAT WHITE has seen the highs of rock and roll success (Grammy nominations, world tours, multiplatinum albums, and heavy video rotation in the Golden Age of MTV) as well as the lows of tragedy (a Rhode Island show that ended in a fire that claimed the lives of 99 fans as well as their guitarist.) In the new Millennium, the band has gone through periods of breakup and relative dissolution but in the past couple of years has reformed their most famous lineup (sans original bassist). Now embarking on their fourth decade performing together, GREAT WHITE has released a new album, Rising, and vocalist Jack Russell is happy where the new music has been taking them.

“We’re getting real airplay on this record and that’s something we haven’t had for ten years”, he says. “It’s amazing to me. It’s always my goal to do one more record. Hopefully the voice will hang in there and keep going. I just want to keep doing this until it’s not fun anymore…

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