Supergroup Stateside 5
Beatles, Beatles Beatles!!!
....Ever scince the 2009 anniversary and new remastered releases it seems that everyone has begun jumping on the Beatles Bandwagon over the last few weeks...even Nintendo! ...and countless bands have started to suddenly quote the fab four as being a major inspiration to their life and sound....even death metal screamos!!...tut tut.
But despite the recent media interest and musical surge there are actualy plenty of gifted unique and alternative musicians who genuinly have been heavily influenced throughout their life by the fab four and have been making original music dedicated to the fab four with a subtle 'beat' edge for years. Two uniquely different Stateside examples of which are here...
Imagine for a moment the wild unexpected key and tempo changes of avant guard Cork Rockers Jezery (Supergroups Ireland 1.7) mixed to the same level of maximum decibels yet lightly filtered through and blended with the harmonics of Lennon and McCartney...This pretty much seems to nail the sound of a band that realy doesn't need much of an introduction to many - Once And Future Kings!! 2009 has seen the band arise with an all new lineup with the mind of Jess Edison still pouring out endless tunes that any musician would welcome the challenge of getting stuck into. Henderson, Hutchings,Petty,Shultz and Palmer have moved into the realm of 'former kings' with former bass and key player Dave Banuelos now 'pioneering primetime tv' in a new outfit while the 'new and future kings' joining Edison in the new lineout are Matt Austin on drums, Rush Enterline on guitar and Matt Robinson on bass.The band will be touring extensively throughout the summer of 2010 with a new album of wild windswept melodies set to further empower their emmerging seas (Emmergent Sea being the title of their debut ep) and cast up a fresh bout of powerfull breakers to sweep right across the States and beyond throughout the coming year. Tunes from both the former, present and future kings can be found at the following link with 'Sirens' displaying a fair slice of that Beatlesque influence along with 'I must be in a womb' which blends those Beatle harmonics with a twist of Radiohead before exploding into a classic with the calibre of 'O Emporer' (see Supergroups Ireland 1.8) at their most potent too.
Get knighted with the sound of Once and Future Kings here...
Our next artist from Orange County CA was (thanks to her musicaly addicted parents) bathed in Beatlemania from birth , so even if she utterly hated the beatles the chances of escaping their influence would have been virtualy impossible. Thankfully for Megan Bennett she loved it so much that the very first song ever penned by Meg as a thirteen year old was actualy written for John Lennon and such was his influence on her songwriting that her debut album was also personaly dedicated to the music and personality of John Lennon . Though traces and flavours of the fab four are certainly detectable on some tracks there is actualy a much harder and late 70's new wave Brit rock and power pop feel to the Rebel Heart sound that provides a continous assault of heavy rocker riffs spliced through with Megs raw vocals . There is something in her voice that recalls the 70's rebellion and punk tremor of Hazel O'Connor yet it seems somehow infused with a joy and optomism that occaisionaly gives Megs vocals an almost Cindi Lauper feel...if you can imagine Cindi Lauper in leathers and discarding girlie pop completely that is...
Thomas Festa provides some excellent breaks, riffs and leadwork throughout the entire Rebel Heart catologue with both Trev Zilla's polished bass and Ulf Giests perfectly timed drumming snapping sharply throughout with equal flair... and just to prove that the band have inherited not only the Lennon wisdom but his gift for success it's worth pointing out that 'Inflexible' (the very first single they released) actualy went straight to number one when it was released in Japan at the end of May 09...just a few days after Meg fullfilled the dream of a lifetime by playing at 'the lads' old regular Liverpool haunt, The Cavern.
The debut album released on the families own 'Wild Thyme' records is not only a little treasure but is also out now with plenty of new material already up on their MySpace profile and a new album release planned for May 2010.We've included a couple of tracks from the debut including the number one Japanese chart breaker 'Inflexible' as well as 'Rebel Heart' with a riff that Motorhead fans would die for! For more on Meg and Rebel Heart follow the link...
We're moving far from the west coast now to a sound regularly incinerating a city normaly associated with 'the kings of country' music..But there's not a single banjo or slide guitar in sight for this new all female band of rock royalty. In 2004 four young girls descended onto the town to form the deceptively named 'Glass Lily'...yet when the nice innocent townsfolk and upstanding citizens turned up expecting to see a musicaly mild and delicate female country performance they were just a little bit shocked to find overpowering soundwaves instantly smashing not only the dainty 'glass lilly' image but every glass, window and pair of spectacles in the house! Glass Lily were quite possibly the loudest all female rock band on the planet..they were also quite probably one of the most musically skilled too. When the innocent townspeople still kept on accidently turning up to their gigs only to pass out at the overwhelming volume of their sound it quickly became apparent that they should change the 'dainty' sounding name to something much more appropriate and so 'Atomic Blonde' was officialy formed.
The girls sailed through the Ernie Ball battle of the bands (leaving the 12000 other entrants in the competition stunned on the sidelines with mouths agape) and quickly found themselves becoming innundated with fans from all over once Fox nationaly publisesed them as the 'next big thing'.There sound has been compared to a number of varying styles of top rock and metal bands -but to clearer and more understandable worldwide comparrison then imagine the grinding riffs, drums, bass and solos of 'Mettalica' infused with the feminine rock chick charms and vocals of pre Eurovision 'Black Daisy'(see Supergroups Ireland 1.2).The girls are currently Kendra Kane on Drums, Danielle Day on Bass, Fran Reed on lead guitar with Dacia on lead vocals and the occaisional shredding. Their 6track debut ep is currently available to order on their sites below and from Myxer, Amazon, iTunes etc etc..
The innocent upstanding citizens of Nashville still regularly turn up and pass out at their concerts, only nowadays they do it deliberately. So if your speakers are powerfull anough you can pass out in the privacy of your own home by going here....
Heres a group of Van Warped veterans who've been busy setting city stages and radio stations alight whenever they fly past on their way to Athena...San Diego's 'Flight To Athena'. Tunes filled with closely worked subtle over and underlays of metallicly welded guitar work swing backwards and forwards throughout cleverly mastered albums of high octane rock. Their songs stop just short of the full blooded 'screamo' but maintains twice the passion within a high paced lyrical framework that energeticaly weaves all the band members into and throughout a continuous moving dialogue of dramatic vocalisations (think Kill The Drama -see Supergroup Stateside 4 - with 'four' vocalists who can also hit any note on any scale at leisure in an intense musical conversation). The band formed in 2006 and independantly released their debut ep (called Flight To Athena) in 2007 to a growing and glowing critical acclaim from all quarters of the
music industry...a critical acclaim that has snowballed due to their live shows with a set that saw the band quickly voted in to a well earned spot on the Vans Warped Tour too. 2009 saw the band return to the studios to record their even more highly acclaimed City Under Fire ep along with their first official video (for O is for Addiction featured above) and they are also strongly tipped to land the top prize in this years 'Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands' too...so make sure you vote for them at the links on their site. Flight To Athena are currently Anthony Silva, Patrick Alcoke, Brian Miller, Ryan Muse and Stephen Burial.
To catch them on their upcoming dates, buy the highly acclaimed ep's and discover their new tracks then board the following flight to their bandsite from the following gate...
A slight yellow caution is added on the video due to content that you might have a challenge explaining to younger children but a big green go is issued for everything else.
What...?? is that it...??
No way Hose!! There's still a few hundred more amazing Statesiders who are currently squeezing themselves into our broadband cables and they will all be bursting through your modems shortly. So keep checking back as we'll be showing off plenty more world class independant Statesiders very, very soon.
In the meantime, you can support some of the best musicians and artists in the world by following the links and buying it!!
all articles Copyright 2009 Mairtin O'Riain and Martin Ryan... The Ryan O'Riain22
all music, audio and video appears with the curtousy of and is the sole copyright and property of the featured artists..so keep the music alive and please support them.
