THE DAMNED THINGS

THE DAMNED THINGS

Fall Out Boy + Anthrax + Every Time I Die = a different kind of rock supergroup

The first sound on Ironiclast, the debut album from unlikely hard-rock supergroup the Damned Things, is a monster guitar riff characteristic of six-string slingers Scott Ian and Rob Caggiano from thrash-metal mainstay Anthrax. The songs that follow are fast, tight and laser-precise—kind of like Every Time I Die, singer Keith Buckley and bassist Josh Newton’s veteran metal-core outfit. Meanwhile, the soaring modern-rock melodies remind one of Fall Out Boy, former home to Damned Things guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley.

Trohman is used to hearing such piecemeal dissections, but he sees the band as more than the mathematical sum of its parts. “It’s easy to say that, because some of it’s heavy, and some of it’s melodic,” he says. “But we wrote what we liked. We weren’t saying, ‘Let’s do an equal mix.’ That was definitely never part of the equation, at least consciously. When we started, the idea was to keep it pretty heavy but have a point to everything and try to not do anything any of us had already done.”

The Damned Things came together four years ago, before Fall Out Boy went on its current indefinite hiatus. Trohman met Ian through a mutual friend, and despite vastly different résumés, the guitarists bonded over a shared love of classic rock. “We met and talked about bands we were into, especially the older rock bands that kick-started the idea of heavy metal, like Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy,” says Trohman, who had played in metal groups with Hurley before Fall Out Boy formed. “It was like, ‘We both like this stuff. Oh, you’re writing music? Oh, I like writing, too. Let’s do a band.’”

They had no trouble recruiting the other members, but all three of their regular bands were busy with other projects at the time. It was only recently that the six musicians found time to cut Ironiclast, produced by Trohman and Caggiano, and prepare for their first-ever U.S. tour. “We’d been trying our best to wait to unleash this band and do it properly, in a way it wouldn’t be offensive to the other bands we were in or offensive to the fans,” Trohman says. “We don’t want to confuse people.” And they don’t want to stop now. The Damned Things (named for a line in Ram Jam’s ’70s version of Leadbelly’s “Black Betty”) will tour together through at least the end of February, and plans are already afoot for another album. “I troll the internet like a creep, and I’ve seen people be like, ‘This better not be a one-off, or I’m going to be pissed off,’” he says. “I like that. I’m already thinking of how I want the next one to sound.”

–Kenneth Partridge

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