The Last Vegas

When you mix glam rock, gritty sound, and a few guys that look like they belong on Hollywood Boulevard you get THE LAST VEGAS. This Chicago based rock group will give you a “brutal appreciation of rock music… that’s gritty, sleazy, and dangerous,” according to vocalist Chad Cherry. Coming off their recent tour with their long time heroes and fellow glam rockers, Mötley Crüe, the band finds themselves headlining in a more intimate atmosphere.

Growing up on arena rockers like Aerosmith and The Doors, this quintet found themselves living a dream when they went on a stadium tour with the Crüe. After the dream tour THE LAST VEGAS are happy to play for smaller crowds in a more intimate atmosphere

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The Last Vegas

Michigan native Chad Cherry and his band The Last Vegas were awarded the iTunes “Rock Song of the Year” in 2009 for the song “I’m Bad off of the album “Whatever Gets You Off”.

The Last Vegas were then hand picked by Motley Crue as a part of Guitar Center’s “On-Stage” Program, and later signed and are managed by the Crue.

The band came together when some of the group were living in the small town of Normal, Illinois playing house parties and decided to take the act to Chicago where they met and where joined by Chad and his childhood friend Danny Smash.
 
Before being signed to Eleven Seven Music, they had independently sold well over 10,000 records, toured in over 17 countries and were designated the official music of Kyle Busch Motor Sports.

Maximum Ink: At what age did you first know you wanted to become a singer? What did you want to do before then?
Chad Cherry: I have always been guided and driven by music. At a very early age I crossed over to the dark side via rock-n-roll and sold my soul. I would say around the age of 14 or 15 I dove into writing and singing songs as more of something I took serious then just for the sake of me not being bored in a small town with nothing to do and nowhere to go. There was only one path that I have been on my whole life. I’ve always wanted to be a part of rock-n-roll chaos.

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Lizard Skynard

I totally agree with Erik “Lizardman” Sprague. “The world needs freaks,” he states in our recent e-mail exchange. “We explore the boundaries and show people that most limits are actually false. Freaks challenge society and provide a reflection for growth and exploration.”

The area for our reflection today will be the new band that he is fronting called ‘Lizard Skynard.’ It is sort of an underground supergroup made up of guitarist/songwriter Mossy Vaughn (The Heavils), bassist Russell Gillespie (Mothertrucker), drummer Johnny Baker (Waco Jesus) and Mossy’s brother, Eric Vaughn on keyboards.

Regardless of the others in the band, the focus of the group will always swing back to the renowned freak, comedian, author and vocalist for the band, Lizardman. If you somehow haven’t heard of him, he is easy to spot with his green tattooed scales, his bifurcated (split) tongue(“I have independent control of both tongues and can do some neat little manipulations with it.”), sharply filed teeth, and the teflon ridges implanted sub-dermally above his eyes. Plus he has worked with and been in several sideshow groups, appeared at many” Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” activities and has hosted many events.

After being involved in so many potentially dangerous endeavors I had to wonder if he had ever been permanently injured from a sideshow type performance. He filled me in, “I have some scars but nothing too serious.  One of my nipples is now noticeably different than the other due to a tear while lifting a car battery.

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Lo-Pro

Hailing from Southern California, Lo-Pro is comprised of frontman Pete Murray, guitarists Pete Ricci and Neil Godfrey, bassist Jerry Oliviera, and drummer Tommy Stewart (ex Godsmack drummer). Murray and Neil have been writing material together for almost 20 years. The long awaited follow up to the self-titled debut called “The Beautiful Sounds of Revenge” is expected to be released in May 2010.

Maximum Ink: Who are some of your musical influences?
Pete Murray: I grew up on Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, U2. I wanted to sing in a band after seeing Ministry live for the first time but I’d say melody is the biggest influence. I also miss the days when massive bands like that would reinvent themselves every time they released a new record - regardless of how well the last one did. There are too many bands nowadays writing the same record over and over because “it worked the first time.”

MI: It is mentioned during the time between albums you had taken up yoga as a way to deal with anger. How would you say it helped you deal with
things?
PM: Yoga taught me how to breathe again. It’s changed my perspective completely. I don’t take this whole journey of life so seriously anymore.

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Lords Of Discipline

Take the shredding of Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Satriani combined with the epic musings of bands like Nile and Behemoth and top it all of with beer soaked Wisconsin metal you have LORDS OF DISCIPLINE, a quintet that define their own take on metal. As bassist Nick Moreno explains, “we only have one gear, and that’s straight out metal, that’s it… we just play metal.”

Brutal and technical are the words these guys live by. Their name runs deeps through not only their musical ventures, but the LORDS OF DISCIPLINE are also regimented in their downtime. Whether it’s learning various forms of martial arts or constant guitar theory, discipline is the heart and soul seeking the level of mastery with a martial arts state-of-mind in music. Their recording techniques reflect the structure they require to create such a monsterous sound. Moreno explains, “it’s the most intimidating thing I have ever come across as a musician.”

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Lords Of The Trident

Can you define heavy metal? Does metal mean screaming vocals and deadly distortion? Or is metal wailing guitar solos and an iron lunged singer?

To Fang VonKillenstein of Lords Of The Trident, heavy metal is “that distorted sound that makes you roll down your windows in the summer and makes you put your fist in the air, out the window. It just gives you that feeling in the pit of your stomach that just drives that ‘yeah.’” One can only assume that “yeah” would make King Diamond proud.

Mr. Killenstein, also known as Ty, defines their sound as “80’s metal mixed with modern influences.”

“Our structure is more towards classics 80’s, but we down tune and are fans of modern death and black metal. Those tonalities show up a lot as well.”

Using their local flavor, they have turned bits and pieces of the UW Campus and Madison into epic metal. Fang explains:

“The Madison music scene is really a lot of indie rock, around campus especially. When you say metal, the average Joe thinks of death and turns the other cheek to our music. Half the people come to our shows for cool music, but the other half just come to see what the hell we are up to. “

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Luna Mortis

Halloween is coming, metal is in the air and Madison will make another mark on the heavy metal map.

Last December you may remember Maximum Ink ran a band called The Ottomon Empire, a Madison metal band featuring the operatic and sometimes brutallic vocals of Mary Zimmer, guitarists Brian Keonig and Cory Scheider, drummer Erik Madsen and bassist Jake Bare, on the front cover.

I had to go back to the Max Ink website to check out the story one more time, seeing how so much had changed in less than a year… but oddly, it was the same.

In July, it was announced that band had signed to Century Media records and that explained to me why they had changed their name to Luna Mortis.

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