Ich bin ein Rocker!
'Hmmm,' sniffed my friend Anthony, a former metal-head,
when I mentioned the band name Diamondsnake. 'It
sounds a bit spandex and hairspray to me.' And indeed, at first,
when I heard about Moby's new band with Satanicide
and Tragedy guitarist and vocalist Phil
Costello, a metal band no less, I did wonder whether
this wasn't some sort of Spinal Tap-esque pastiche. The band's website
does little to neutralise the view.
The first clue to the band's earnestness comes when
Costello explains the origins of the band's moniker. 'Moby came
up with the name after a lot of brainstorming. Our goal was to evoke
the style of music without being ironic.'
Well-accustomed to Moby's seemingly endless musical
genre-hopping, most recently heard with his electronic masterpiece
Wait For Me and the near-simultaneous release of The Little
Death's self-titled album - a blues-rock band fronted by
sometime Moby vocalist Laura Dawn in which he plays bass - a switch
to metal is nevertheless initially a surprise; that is, until Costello
reminds me that Moby has produced material for Ozzy Osborne and
Guns 'n Roses. Oh, and there's the small matter of his over-looked
bleak thrash-punk opus, Animal Rights as well as his early
hardcore Connecticut band Vatican Commandos.
'I met Moby via mutual friends,' explains Costello,
'and he always supported a lot of my bands - namely Satanicide and
more recently Tragedy. He'd come to shows and take the stage with
us during encores. We'd do covers like 'Whole Lotta Love' and stuff,
and it was always really fun.'
Particularly in Costello's Robert Plant vocal style,
the influence of Led Zeppelin is writ large in the Diamondsnake
sound. 'All the classic rock greats, really,' expands Costello.
'The Sweet, Slade, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Mötley Crüe, Guns n' Roses...
the whole band is, and always has been, huge fans of those bands
and that style.'
The project started with Moby and Costello writing
the songs individually, then building those ideas into a solid blueprint
for each track. The next step was to flesh the songs out with a
full band. Moby alternated between bass and guitar, Costello took
vocal duties as well as guitar, and Sound of Urchin's
Tomato took the skins. 'Aside from maybe hardcore
and speed metal, rock n' roll is all about the pocket,' explains
Costello, 'so you've gotta settle into a groove and that can't really
be achieved at ridiculously fast tempos. Tomato is the man
at achieving that groove. He was the perfect guy for the job.' The
band was completed with guitarist and bassist Dave Hill,
who Costello has known for years and who he describes as 'one of
the most talented dudes I know.'
Taking their clutch of fifteen raw rock tracks into
Brooklyn's Headgear studio with engineer Scott Norton, the band
recorded and mixed the tracks, mostly live without a click track,
in a single day. 'I'm extremely impressed with what we were able
to achieve,' says Costello. 'Even for super on-the-fly mixes, the
tracks sound great... the best drum and guitar sounds I've ever
recorded.'
Thirteen of these tracks can be downloaded for free
from the band's Facebook
page. The tracks range from the thudding call-to-arms of 'Storm
The Fucking Kastle' to the good time anthems of 'We Wanna Love You',
'Yeah' and 'Rock And Raw', to the plaintive heavy blues of 'Lady
Of The Morning' and 'Wrong Woman To Love'; there are tracks dealing
with the universal power of rock music ('What The World Needs Now
Is Rock', 'A Million Strong'); lots of songs about good and bad
women and a lyrical lambasting of second-rate bands on 'I Wanna
Roll'.
'I'm extremely happy with the way they sound,' says
Costello, justifiably proudly.
Catch Diamondsnake live at the Highline,
NYC on June 17 and the Dragonfly in LA on July 7.
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