HAIR OF THE DOG SET TO 'RISE' Page 4

Elsewhere, the band really get get down to what they do best: gutsy, grinding party metal with a discernable, traditional midwest vibe, producer Michael Wagener at one point even calling in a six pack of Hooters girls to sing back-ups on the band's tongue-in-cheek testimony to "big ones", better known as 'Mokur Jahobees.' That same night, after a champagne-in-the-afternoon soiree with the Hooters girls, the band recorded a drunken acoustic jam back at the band house, 'Outta Control' being the result, added here as a hidden bonus track. "We had the acoustic guitars and we just started playing that song. It was just kind of floating around and we hadn't touched it for years. It was pretty much an accident. And it sounds like an accident (laughs), but that's what the charm of it was. That was actually just a video recorder mic, and we took it right from the video tape. We figured that night would be a wash, so we just let the tape run."

But the ultimate manifestation of the band's "get up and stay up" credo is the hard-hitting affirmation of the title track 'Rise', a riff that guitarist John Sepetys calls "a real adrenalin-pumper, one that just gets you ready to put your head through a wall." It is indeed a crusher, turning the tables on its Sabbath-like heft by inciting all to rise above and conquer. "I think that's the theme of the whole album," offers John. "Lyrically, we push a belief in yourself, standing up against the odds, fighting for what you believe in, and not worrying about anybody else says is cool or not. As well, there's a huge "have fun and party" kind of thing, the whole tits and booze vibe (laughs). But seriously, I think the most important thing is matching the lyric to the music. That marriage is important. You can take something, read it, and it can be moving, but when you put music to it with the same kind of attitude, hopefully it becomes an emotional experience."

Ryan sums up the very palpable feeling that the time is ripe for a record that slaps you upside the head with something logical: the fact that we want to enjoy life, as a track on Rise puts it, escape the 9 to 5 and embrace the 5 to 9. "I know just from touring our asses off, that there's a huge crowd out there that is just dying for the kind of stuff we're doing. And I love hearing that. We had plenty of chances to get haircuts and become the next alternative band. You know what? We could have done it, but we would have been horrible at it. And I think people are saying, 'I'm tired of being depressed, I'm tired of complaint rock, I'm tired of having preached to me the whole time that life is bad.' So this is back to the basics of good-time rock. And to me to a Les Paul cranked through a Marshall in 2000 sounds like a Les Paul cranked through a Marshall in 1978. It's the same guitar, it's the same amp, it's just a different guy's pair of hands. I just want people to know more than anything that this is Saturday night music. God, everybody's heard about those infamous Van Halen backyard parties, and the stuff that Motley Crue did, and that whole mentality is there in this band. We're barbecue music in your backyard, man. But we just want to take it to a bigger and bigger scale. We want your backyard to be an arena."

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