| Bert McCracken - vocals Jeph Howard - bass Branden Steineckert - drums/ vocals Quinn Allman - guitar/ vocals "This could be my chance to break out..." - "The Taste Of Ink" Some go their entire lives toting an unrealized dream and an accompanying regret. Others slave to an instinctive hunger and hunt that dream until the hunger is sated. The Used are hungry. Hailing from Orem, Utah, the band has surmounted homelessness, substance abuse and closed-minded environs to create compelling, sincere music, which they perform with style and verve live and on their debut album for Reprise Records. Recorded in LA at the home studio of producer John Feldmann and at London's legendary Olympic Studios (Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin), it contains thirteen anthems and ballads that thrum with the intensity of four guys who have given everything to one thing: music. Their effort is palpable in a spray of crashing rhythms, sublime melodies, candid lyrics, dynamic vocals and, natch, big guitars. The songs themselves are direct accounts. "Maybe Memories" is a snapshot of singer Bert McCracken's drug-occluded past set to a Deftones-y groove. "A Box Full Of Sharp Objects" salutes the creative outlet, and "On My Own" is an acoustic heartbreak ballad that actually screams the pain. "Blue And Yellow" captures a shaky juncture in McCracken's friendship with guitarist Quinn Allman. "The Taste Of Ink" is the story of the band. For The Used, music transcends the Stepford-like surroundings of their youth. "You're held down so long and told what to do," says drummer Branden Steineckert. "You're supposed to fit in this fuckin' mold all the time. Music is your one place to break out and just say fuck it all, do what you want, be the person you are with no fuckin' rules." And fuck it all, they did. Relationships, day jobs and other responsibilities were flushed. They survived, literally, on the kindness of strangers. "We'd spend hours panhandling so we could eat, then we'd bum rides to practice," reveals Steineckert, adding the lean times fortified friendships within the band and creativity flourished in tandem. There was only one obstacle. The Used is a live band, and Orem and neighboring Provo, together comprising the most devout, closed-minded concentration of Mormons in the country, is far from a live music mecca. When The Used managed to land a gig at one of the scant venues, their show so rattled the club owners' dainty constitutions that they weren't invited back. "Everywhere we played, people wouldn't let us back because the way we play, I don't know...we kinda...I think it would frighten some people," Steineckert explains. "It's just us goin' off, and it's too much, the puke and the fuckin' blood and things like that." Their live experience is indeed a visceral one. Every note, every scream and every leap carries the possibility of a laceration or a contusion, a lost shoe, a damaged instrument or worse: McCracken, who prowls the stage singing and screaming as if jockeying for an aneurysm, often drops chow. "Sometimes, there's no way in hell I can keep it down," he laughs. "I just love to scream in people's faces and sometimes it makes me puke." He affectionately calls it Bertie's Madness and, while revolting at face value, there is no better example of The Used's ethic. The band continues to give everything to one thing. No band wants "it" as much as the Used, nor deserves it more.. Is The Used the band rock and roll desperately needs? God, yes. But it's a mutual need, and The Used isn't taking anything for granted, as McCracken sings in "The Taste Of Ink": "So here I am/it's in my hands/and I'll savor every moment of it." |