Trans Siberian Orchestra

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and while the rest of us are worrying about what time we should start roasting our turkeys, Paul O’Neill has a different set of concerns: The 18 semis and 16 tour busses that are transporting his Trans-Siberian Orchestra spectacles across America.

Yes, spectacles.

In seven years, Trans-Siberian Orchestra has not only become the holiday season’s main concert attraction, but also one of the year’s top ticket-sellers. And they accomplish this in less than six weeks on the road, splitting their ensemble into two equally impressive and awe-inspiring bands, each of which is responsible for performing in front of a different half of America in the final weeks of each year. Sound confusing? Try spearheading the whole operation, which O’Neill has done since he conceived the idea that would become the band’s now multi-platinum debut, Christmas Eve And Other Stories, nearly a decade ago. 

Yet in the face of it all, he remains as calm and composed as a freshly fallen Christmas snow.

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Bif Naked

Just the name, Bif Naked, conjures up pornstar imagery right off the bat and certainly the Canadian rocker and starlet (whose scene was the highlight of the otherwise cinematic bowel movement, House of the Dead) isn’t afraid to take advantage of her sex appeal, but that doesn’t mean she’s invulnerable.

“I’m a real gullible girl and I always believe anything a boy will ever tell me. I get suckered a lot, but always get back up on the love horse,” she explains when discussing the songs on her latest album, Superbeautifulmonster. “I just came off a big heartache and was enshrouded in despair when I wrote [album tracks] ‘Abandonment’ and ‘After A While’. I like to think that I better my efforts, my songwriting, and singing with every record and this one’s a little darker and sadder, it’s much more guitar-oriented. There’s something that everyone can relate to. I’m crazy about love, crazy about the whole process. I keep getting knocked down, but I keep getting back in the ring.”

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Nine Inch Nails

It’s been six years since Trent Reznor released The Fragile, and a lot has changed in Reznor’s world. Nowhere is that more present than in new release With Teeth. Less epic in its structure than The Fragile double-disc, With Teeth is Reznor refined to a songwriting sheen, rather than navigating a colossal musical landscape. The songs still radiate with the thrust and tenacity inherent in Nine Inch Nails, but they do so with a bounce and vibrancy that breathes new life into the band, now featuring former Marilyn Manson bassist Jeordie White, Icarus Line guitarist Aaron North, returning drummer Jerome Dillon, and keyboardist Alessandro Cortini. At their heaviest, they’re industrial-fueled with a metallic surge, but there’s also an adherence to structural simplicity that harkens back to Reznor’s Pretty Hate Machine. With Teeth isn’t as pissed-off and dark as The Downward Spiral, or as emotionally bogged-down and cumbersome as The Fragile . And rightfully so neither is Reznor.

Maximum Ink sat down with the Nine Inch Nails mastermind to discuss the changes in the new album, as well as the changes in his life… 

MAXIMUM INK: Was With Teeth approached with a different direction in mind than previous albums?

TRENT REZNOR: Well, I went about writing in a different way. The last couple records, Downward Spiral and The Fragile, I realized I had written in the studio. Being that I don’t have a band to rehearse songs with, the studio becomes my instrument, and I had finally gotten a really nice place with everything I needed in it. I was realizing that the writing process was starting to become the same as the arranging and production process. It was all happening at the same time, there weren’t any demos anymoreI’d just go in the studio and come out with the songs finished, pretty much. This time around, for whatever reason, I wanted to get back to doing demos and start from a different place. Instead of starting with sounds and textures and that sort of thing, I started with words and melodies. So I moved out to L.A. and set up a place that purposely didn’t have much in it, just a piano and a drum machine, and a computer to record into. I set an every-week-and-a-half kind of deadline that didn’t allow me any time to really go off on a tangent, and let me just focus on the core of the song, then go back later and flush things out. And I think working that way made the record turn out more song-based, and less soundscape. I don’t think that’s better or worse, it’s just a different way of working that seemed like the right thing to do.

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The Dirty Three

I had no idea what to expect when I got to the door of the East End, the short-lived club on Madison’s east side in the mid-nineties. I was there for the Man… or Astro-Man show as they were on the cover that month. What I didn’t know was that the opening act, The Dirty Three, would be a band I would love for years to come. That was October of 1996.

Prior to the show, I hadn’t heard much about this Australian band, except that they traveled around the country, in an old, black Cadillac, going show to show without breaking. I’d heard stories about the band’s leader and violinist Warren Ellis, and his love for whiskey.

When I ran into him at the show, bottle in hand and wearing black, he was just as mysterious and foreboding a figure as I’d heard about. In fact, they were all very quiet.

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Carbellion

American Heavy Rock, it’s the title of southeastern Wisconsin band, Carbellion’s first EP and according to lead singer, Cameron Kellenberger, the most apt description of their music. “Thematically, a lot of the songs are pro-United States, American culture”, he says, “heavy rock is a tag we put that just kinda stuck.”

Formed from the ashes of Milwaukee metal stalwarts, the Carbon Parlor and Whiskey Rebellion, Carbellion is a mash-up of the two former band’s names. But Cameron likes to tell unsuspecting fans that it’s a Spanish ghost-ship, a matador-killing Mexican bull, or a Civil War soldier. Carbellion has already played many of the Midwest’s biggest cities in support of bands like Corrosion of Conformity, Clutch (who the band feels are musical brothers-in-arms), and Alabama Thunderpussy.

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