Concert in your area for Rock, Metal, and Indie & Alt.
Back in 1990, Jeff Martin, Stuart Chatwood and Jeff Burrows all knew each other and had played together in the close-knit Windsor, Ontario Rock scene. The trio had a marathon jam session in Toronto’s Cherry Beach Rehearsal Studios and decided to keep playing together afterwards.
Once they decided on the name (named for Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs’ legendary has sessions and not that little thing that happened in Boston a couple of hundred years back), they self-released their debut album the year after they formed. Only 3’500 copies of the album were ever made but it was enough to get them a deal with EMI Music Canada, which they signed in 1993.
The album went platinum in its home country the year after its release but it was also their breakthrough hit in Australia, a country where they continue to be very popular to this day. It was with their debut major label album, called “Splendor Solis” that they began experimenting with their trademark Indian music influences.
The band wrote and recorded a lot of the music utilising open tunings and goblet drums to achieve the sound, while still mixing it with their psychedelic blues backing. However, it wasn’t until their third album “The Edges Of Twilight” and specifically the single “Sister Awake” that they truly realized their potential. “The Edges Of Twilight” would be their most commercially succesful album, going double platinum in their home country.
The band would go on releasing albums to great success until 2005, when the band abruptly split due to creative differences. The members would drift into solo careers but they came back together in 2011 for a set of live shows and a new album, 2011’s “The Ocean At The End”. This is a rare act with talent, vision and a desire to create what’s never been heard before, we’re lucky to have them, and they’re a live act to be seen as soon as possible.
Trust me on this, there is far more to this band than just that single. In fact, Alien Ant Farm is one of the true originals on Nu-Metal, coming together the year after Korn changed the face of heavy metal with their self-titled debut album.
The band was something pretty unique within the scene itself, a band that had a sense of humour about themselves. For one, their band name came to original lead guitarist Terry Corso through a surprisingly existential thought.
He wondered whether all life on Earth had come from an experiment done by, in his words “entities from other dimensions”, and that we were being monitored by those same creatures like we were living in some kind of Alien Ant Farm.
I’m sure it was a train of thought that had nothing to do with certain smokeable substance whatsoever. At all. Anyway, they stood out at a time when Nu-Metal was a mainstream concern, so of course they were going to be big. It was at that point that “Smooth Criminal” was released; in the lead up to their first major label release “ANThology”.
It went to number one in Australia and New Zealand, top three in the U.K and topped the Modern Rock charts in the U.S. If you were alive and not living under a rock in the summer of 2001, you definitely heard it many times.
Since then the band has released a handful of albums. The band toured solidly through the 2000s as well, performing shows with the likes of Hoobastank, Fuel and on the Vans Warped Tour. There are fewer bands around with more live experience than them. And a night out with Alien Ant Farm, will surely be a night to remember.
The tea party, possibly the only tea that has the effect of coffee! In that it fills you with so much energy you don't know what to do with yourself but move your body!
Fans screaming so loud in admiration, they rivaled the noise of the electric guitar! The energy rippling off these three guys was immense, I have NEVER seen anything like it.
Fans raised their arms in the air and cheered as the band interacted with the passionate crowd as they played 'The River' such an amazing song with an amazing drum pattern! It's one thing to spend many of your nights and evenings listening to a band and learning words to the songs that become your anthems, but to then see them live? that feeling is unrivaled and these men make it fully worth it!
The crowd moved in unison when The Tea Party performed 'waters on fire' this song has such a peaceful and meaningful vibe, it is truly something special. As the group combine rock music with a whole heap of other genres I don't think there is a song they would not dare make, once made it in itself would truly be something terrific!
Live, this trio is something special, they have plenty plenty more years to come and their fan base will only grow.
If they are performing live, buy tickets!
Anybody who only knows Alien Ant Farm for their classic cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ back in 2001 - that’ll be most people, then - might be surprised to know that they’re still a going concern; the truth is, though, that they’d already carved out a significant cult fanbase long before one of them decided it’d be a good idea to record a version of the King of Pop’s classic that would pay tribute to him and parody him in equal measure. After forming to play live in 1995, their first record, the cheekily-titled Greatest Hits, was an underground success four years later, by which time they were already deep into the kind of nu metal sound that would define their second, DreamWorks-released album, Anthology, a global success. In keeping with the tone of their songs, and indeed music videos, Alien Ant Farm live shows are lighthearted affairs, with bassist Tye Zamora taking on the role of class clown and proving that the bassface was alive and well long before the girl from Haim took it to the masses. They haven’t toured the UK in a while - a Manchester show in their 2002 heyday met with a one-star review from The Guardian - but with Always and Forever, their first record in eight years, slated for later this year, a long-overdue return could be on the cards.