The sound is arena-ready; now, where are the fans?
What do the Beatles and director Peter Jackson have in common? According to Dimitri Coats, singer/guitarist for the heavy-rock band Burning Brides, both have demonstrated the kind of eclecticism and daring that inspires his group's sound. Music "should be dark and dangerous and exciting and fun, but it should also be beautiful and have moments of vulnerability," he says over the phone from a Minneapolis tour stop. "That's the sign of any true, great art."
Since meeting bassist and musical partner Melanie Campbell at Juilliard in 1996, Coats has devoted himself to creating work that spans that spectrum. The result, after these years of sonic exploration, nonstop touring, and the addition of drummer Jason Kourkounis (Hot Snakes), is the band's second album and major-label debut, "Leave No Ashes," a tightly coiled, tautly controlled blast of riff-soaked rock.
On the CD, the Burning Brides, who play the Middle East Downstairs tonight, kick out the fuzz, as they do on the album's title track, a vitriol-dusted rocker featuring fiery guitar histrionics and a Kurt Cobain-esque yowl.
But they show they can also slink sexily through a song, as on the midtempo rocker "Vampire Waltz," with its mournful, bluesy guitar and bristling vocals. And they mix and match moods seamlessly within tracks, such as on "King of the Demimonde," which opens with a sultry, low-rolling bass line and culminates with Coats screaming and swaggering.
"Dance with the Devil" isn't as dark as its title suggests, opening with a bright pop bounce, as Coats unfurls a scratchy wail amid glints of piano before unleashing an epic, drum-roiled rock breakdown.
Although the album, a hard-rocking party, seems to detonate into random directions, the band has carefully crafted its sound. Coats applies an analytical eye to work by other musicians and the musical landscape in general.
He says only a few other bands -- including Queens of the Stone Age, with whom his band has toured -- are writing the kind of tough, sexy rock 'n' roll he aspires to create. "I think Queens is after that kind of maturity in rock 'n' roll," says Coats, a Concord native who once studied acting. "What we're also trying to do is not be afraid of being moronic and fun and juvenile, but mix it up with cleverness and show off our taste in all different kinds of styles."
The band's deft musical mix has always served it well, according to bassist Damian Genuardi of Boston punks the Explosion, which is supporting Burning Brides on its current tour. "I've always sort of considered them like Black Sabbath meets Nirvana," he says. "And they're awesome live. [Coats's] voice is amazing, and as a group they're super tight and the sound is always good. And they just shred."
Coats says he and his bandmates have striven to be less self-conscious about the songs they pen and the emotions they reveal. "That's something we pride ourselves on, is being honest with our feelings and with what's going on at any given time in our lives," he says. "And originally I thought, Oh, if I wrote a slower, power ballad kind of a song, that couldn't be Burning Brides, but it can."
Now that the band, based in Philadelphia after previous homes in Boston and Portland, Ore., has finessed its sound and sensibility and conditioned itself to become a road-hardened rock `n' roll machine, there's just one thing missing: fans. Although the group has played for arenas full of thousands on tours with some of today's biggest and heaviest rock acts, including Audio Slave and A Perfect Circle, it's had trouble building a following.
"I guess it's a harsh time for the music industry, that's what they tell me," Coats says. "So we're out in the trenches right now."
Although the momentum the band has steadily built over the past five years has failed to translate to larger recognition, it seems as if it's only a matter of time. The same brazen dynamism that infuses the band's bigger-than-life sound radiates from Coats, who tries to coax people to come see Burning Brides in a way that's part come-on and part threat, and very much like the band's music itself.
"They can expect to get knocked down on the ground by a gigantic sledgehammer," he says, "and then slowly picked up and cradled and caressed into a kiss."
