| Modern-rock band Fuel kindles the fire By Alan K. Stout Knight Ridder Newspapers Forget about the sophomore slump. From the looks of things, Fuel still has plenty of gas in the tank. The powerhouse modern-rock band's new album ''Something Like Human'' recently debuted in the Billboard Top-20. Its first single, ''Hemorrhage (In My Hands)'' is the No. 2 modern-rock track in the country and, musically, the group is again combining seari ng guitars with hooky melodies. And -- like it did on its platinum debut, ''Sunburn'' -- the band is finding a receptive audience. Still, guitarist and chief songwriter Carl Bell says the dynamic outfit wasn't simply looking to record ''Sunburn II'' when it entered the studio to record a follow-up. A broader mix of songs, he says, was the goal. ''We toured for two years, and I spent two years in the back of the bus with my little mobile studio just writing everything I could,'' says Bell, whose blazing guitars are the anchor of Fuel's sound. From the pounding riffs of the ''Last Time,'' to the groove-laced ''Empty Spaces'' the soft ''Bad Day,'' the rhythmic ''Easy'' and the steady- building ''Innocent,'' Fuel's latest does offer a fairly disparate batch of tunes while always maintaining a se nse of cohesiveness. And that, says Bell, is how all albums should be. ''When I hear other records that are out right now, (it seems) bands just stick to one kind of song,'' he says. ''All you hear is that one song over and over again, 11 times on a record. For me as a listener, that gets boring, and for me as a writer, tha t gets boring as well.'' For ''Something Like Human,'' Bell says the band also got more involved with the production. Bell himself is credited as co-producer. ''We took a lot more control,'' he says. |
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