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April 14 - 21, 2000

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There today

The '80s never sounded heavier

by Don Fluckinger

There When Boston heavy-metal trio There started out 11 years ago as smart-aleck high schoolers throwing down the power chords at the Middle East in Cambridge, heavy metal was on the wane. Poison, Mötley Crüe, and Ratt were heaving their last, heavy sighs, while Metallica, Nirvana, industrial bands like Ministry, and hardcore bands had divvied up the spoils. Heavy music moved away from the "rock and roll all night and party every day" mentality into deeper, darker, more introspective themes.

There (who appear this Wednesday at the Lucky Dog) were part of a dying genre then. Now, with the players headed toward their 30s, There's hard-rocking Zeppelin/Sabbath sound is an anachronism, a reminder of what rock sounded like before Trent Reznor and Kurt Cobain rewrote the rules. Despite There's tightness, which comes after a decade of practicing, recording, and playing out, and despite their loving devotion to old metal, kids today want to hear groups that sound like Godsmack and Rage Against the Machine. Or hardcore, like Honkeyball and Tree.

"The clubs always say they just want whatever the kids want," says There ringleader Jake Hamilton, who plays bass, sings lead vocals, and manages the business side of There's rock. "I think finding the audience that has been most interested and most supportive and most motivated to check out what we're doing has always been a trick."

The '80s metal movement was a bandwagon affair; at one time, There's style was more commercially viable than anything else on the radio, including pop, hip-hop, soul, and country. While great bands like Kiss and Aerosmith set the standards for grand stage shows and catchy tunes, the lure of easy money attracted many bands heavy on glamour and light on substance.

At its makeup-laden, leather-clad height, heavy was pure commercialism, right down to the chart-topping power ballads. It seemed as though a lot of similarly named groups (one set that comes to mind is Great White, White Lion, and Whitesnake) were in the business only for the money. That's what makes it so ironic that There, who actually love the music and perform it well, now have to scramble for gigs.

Nevertheless, Hamilton, guitarist Andrew Shadrawy, and drummer Vic Dobson persist, having established a following on the Portland, Maine, and Boston circuits. They've the leather, the chains, dry ice, and a whole lot of attitude.

"We're definitely into the theatrics of it," Hamilton says. "As our budget gets bigger, I definitely look forward to finding ways to give people more and more of a show, as far as the spectacle of it that kind of coincides with the heavy, heavy loud presence of the sound that we're doing."

For just three players, There can pump out a surprisingly heavy roar. Following the "power trio" model, they pull off their act without a full-time rhythm guitarist or keyboard player filling in the sonic blanks on stage, a difficult task. Furthermore, there are no power ballads on There's latest CD, There II, the follow-up to the group's 1997 debut. The tunes all ring familiar: "All Over for You" has a down-and-dirty '70s FM album-rock groove, and "It's Coming Again" is taken straight from the Sabbath playbook.

While '70s chestnuts sometimes work their way into the live set, the only cover on the CD is fairly obscure. "Can You Picture That," a tune in the funky vein of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way," was copped from, of all places, the Muppet Movie soundtrack. It comes along in the movie when Fozzie and Kermit are plotting their escape from Doc Hopper and run into Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

"That's literally something that we had the original vinyl copy on and we kind of analyzed and figured out how we were going to do that, long before we ever thought we wanted to record it," Hamilton says. "I really was sort of opposed to actually trying to pull that one off, because I was like, well, we don't want to get sued."

One tune on There II that would fit on today's radio, sandwiched between Rage and Offspring, is the heavy, punchy, hardcore closer, "The Rat," which follows "Ransack," an extended thrasher that itself would be at home on a 1990s Metallica CD.

But There's main focus goes back to the salad days of Ozzy and Jimmy Page. "Their stuff live always gave me lots of ideas as to how I wanted to try to get our own material across," Hamilton says. While proud to be associated with the city that spawned FM heroes Aerosmith, the Cars, and the J. Geils Band, Hamilton rejects the idea there's is a "Beantown sound."

"I'd be surprised if somebody heard us without knowing where we were from and said, `Oh, you guys are from Boston,' " Hamilton says. "But, hey, if that's the case, more power to that."

There play at on April 19 at Lucky Dog Music Hall. Call 363-1888.

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