Anthrax

Throughout their infamous 20 year career, the mighty ANTHRAX has always prided themselves on being a band of the people, for the people and by the people. This being said and with 2004 being an election year, ANTHRAX have taken that ideal one step further with their upcoming release, THE GREATER OF TWO EVILS, an all out assault on their history with each song being voted on by their fans via the Internet.

Recorded “live” in the studio over the course of two days, THE GREATER OF TWO EVILS stands out, as guitarist Scott Ian puts it, “As a raw, balls out, and in your face representation of how brutal this band is, was, and will always be.”

Judas Priest

In 1969, while hippies pranced about the farm fields of Woodstock, New York with flowers in their hair, Birmingham, England was giving birth to a monstrous new musical genre that came to be known as heavy metal. A group called Black Sabbath released its first album that year, and while others both in the United States and England were flirting with the heavier side of rock ‘n’ roll, it was that band that nailed metal squarely between the eyes.

Five years later, Birmingham’s fertile musical loins produced another heavy metal monster, one that came to rise just as high as the first, and perhaps, at times, was even more nimble. The vocals soared over others, the songs galloped faster, and two lead guitarists were used rather than one. That band was Judas Priest.

Amazingly, both Birmingham groups have reformed after varying hiatuses and are touring together this summer with Ozzfest, still playing the aggressive, distortion-heavy songs they wrote decades ago in front of fanatical, sellout crowds around the world. Recently, Rob Halford, the outspoken lead singer of Judas Priest, was kind enough to talk with Maximum Ink about his recently reunited band as well as the resulting tour and musical releases.

Lorenzo Music

Despite grumblings about the supposedly long lost Madison music scene, new and talented bands keep rising up as if nothing had ever burned or closed down. The better ones, like anywhere else, are those that seem to defy easy categorization. You hear a hint of this and a reference to that, but you can’t pin the group down. Such is the case with Lorenzo Music.

At the core are two musicians who have experienced the changing musical tides here between the lakes. Tod Schwenn spent a good amount of time in Rapscallion during the late-80s and early-90s, around the same time Tom Ray was in Fallacy. After those bands broke up, the two decided to start jamming and writing together. The songs came together so well that they decided to form a permanent band and, after finding the right musicians, did their first gig in March of 1996.

Lorenzo Music explores many areas of sound, going from keyboard- driven, Doors-like jams to lounge swings to power guitars in a single song. The key is that they do it gracefully, at times almost unnoticeably. Most of the keyboards are done on a vintage Rhodes electric piano that Ray bought for $150 when such instruments were out of style. Schwenn supplies the guitar and the two share the vocal work. Every musician in this band has experience: second guitarist Brandon Krueger was in Peep Show, bassist Mark Whitcomb played in Insanity A.D., Carl and Swiggo, and drummer Scott Beardsley also gigged with Swiggo as well as Mindox (which also featured Buddo of Magic 7 & Last Crack).