The members of Superjoint Ritual want you to give them a chance.
"If you're walking by the rack in the CD store or you happen by our show, check it out," said Jim Bower, a guitarist for the band. "You never know what you'll like and we think you'd like it."
Superjoint Ritual is something of a super group, with Phillip Anselmo of Pantera handling the lead vocals/guitar and none other than Hank Williams III taking care of bass duties. The other members of the band, Bower, Joe Fazzio and Kevin Bond, are all longtime friends and have previously collaborated in other groups like post-underground favorite Down.
Superjoint's new CD, A Lethal Dose of American Hatred, is a lyrical onslaught that continues the band's mission, as outlined on the group's first CD, Use Once and Destroy. Anselmo is a fury with his vocals and continues to contribute to the progression of metal with his unique styling. The addition of Williams, however, really takes the band to the next level.
Bower told the Daily Lobo that pretty much all of the members of the group were huge country music fans as kids growing up around Louisiana. At age 14 when he met Williams, Bower was the bigger country fan and Williams was the bigger metal fan.
He said that just because Williams is from one of country music's most prestigious lines, people should not mistake him for "just a country boy."
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"He's into that music, don't get me wrong, but when he's working with Superjoint, he's 100 percent metal," Bower said.
When asked about the rumors flying around the Internet that Pantera was disbanding, Bower said that he could not respond to that question since he was not Anselmo.
Since A Lethal Dose of American Hatred has come out, Anselmo has been quoted as saying that Superjoint Ritual is the group that he wants to be in and this band will receive 100 percent of his time and support, causing Pantera fans to question the status of the metal great.
Although dodging the question of Pantera's future, Bower said that the members of Superjoint all made the same commitment - to try and push this new group to the edge and over it in an attempt to break new ground.
"That's what you have to do to make people know about a band and to break a band," he said. "Everybody made an agreement to put some time and effort into this band and try to make this work."
Bower added that since the members made the agreement, there has been a noticeable shift in their writing as well as their live performances.
Their current tour started in Little Rock, Ark., progressed through Texas and will continue in Albuquerque tonight. The tour will finally conclude in Oklahoma on Sept. 14, after which Bower said that Superjoint plans to take about three weeks off and then head out with Danzig on the "Blackest of the Black" tour.
With influences as varied as Black Flag and the Discharged, from the Melvins to Willie Nelson, Superjoint Ritual is something of an oddity these days. The band is a metal group that isn't trying to fuse it's sound with hip-hop or techno, but rather sticking with the roots of what made the guitar popular in the first place.
Bower said he thinks it will be a success and he wants people to give the band a chance.
"Basically, in a nutshell, what we're trying to do is to give back to the kids what we heard as kids, the music that we loved," he said.
Superjoint Ritual will be playing at the Sunshine Theater tonight at 7:30 p.m.
