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Hydrate
Published: July 2003
Story: Jeff Royer
Photo: Press photo |
It's a story of sin and salvation, darkness and light, triumph of the
human spirit. Can you feel the drama? But really, it's the story of a
cover band that bit the bullet, taught itself to write original
songs, and ended up with a catalog of tunes well beyond the caliber
one might expect from a local band.
"We started playing covers, stuff we liked - Foo Fighters, Tool, you
name it - and eventually it evolved into an all-original band in the
heavy, modern rock vein," is singer/bassist Dan Lineaweaver's terse
explanation.
The band's music is at once accessible and unusual, although the
members' penchant for writing songs with upwards of 10 parts can make
for a convoluted listen. "We're on the heavy side, but we do a lot of
really melodic stuff, too," says Lineaweaver. "It's very eclectic.
Everything in modern music over the past 10 or 15 years is probably
in there somewhere.
"We're not a four-chord band. A lot of stuff we do is extremely
complex," he continues. "But when you listen to the song five or 10
times, you'll start to pick up stuff you never knew was there."
With every rock critic and his grandma predicting the death of
nu-metal, I asked Lineaweaver if he was concerned about following in
the footsteps of the band'sarguably doomed influences, such as
Godsmack and Tool.
"Not really. I take all that stuff with a grain of salt," he shrugs.
"It doesn't scare me, because we don't sound like Godsmack, we don't
sound like System [of a Down]. We're not in that typical vein that
you're hearing on 105.7 The X right now. We're starting to kind of go
in a different direction. If anything else, we're hoping to help
change that and lead into whatever the new sound's gonna be."
With its debut album in the can (release is set for later this
summer), Hydrate has been able to test audiences with early copies.
And that, says Lineaweaver, is the good stuff. "Once we got a chance
to actually listen to what we're doing and see what it sounds like
from a recorded perspective," he says, "that was a big kick for us,
because we got a lot of other people to hear it, and we got a lot of
good feedback."
Next up for Lineaweaver, drummer Corey Willard, and guitarist Seth
Pelepko: take over the world, of course. But they're going to start
in their own backyard. "We really want to focus on starting in
Central Pennsylvania and expanding out to Philly, Pittsburgh,
Scranton, Baltimore, New York, and slowly grow like a spiral out of
this area and back in to try to really start growing out regionally,"
Lineaweaver explains. "My belief is if you grow an organic base and
you do it right and you get a solid following, you can slowly build
into the national level and not be the typical one-hit wonder no one
ever heard of."
For more info, visit the band on-line at
www.hydratemusic.com.
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Untitled Document
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