Metamorphosis

June 7, 2006

For many local bands, playing all-original music is a gamble on  par with Russian roulette.  Unless you’re an established act with CDs  and radio play under your belt, most audiences expect to hear  familiar cover tunes they can dance to.  Playing original music can  limit a band’s opportunities to play in the few nightspots that still  offer live music.
So give the four members of Commonfaced credit:  the maximum metal  band is bending the strings with an all-original lineup of  songs, despite the fact that the band already had a built-in fan base in their prior incarnation as the hard-rock cover band, Bad Monkey.
As Bad Monkey, the band once pulled a crowd of 650 to a show at Streeters Ground Zero in 2002. The band pioneered a style of aggressive metal that struck a nerve with local audiences.
“We put Bad Monkey together back in 1999 because we wanted to play heavier stuff,” recalls bassist Dave Weber. “At the time everyone was playing the same-old, same-old rock and we wanted to play more aggressive music. We got fired from our first two gigs because the bar owners said our music was too aggressive, but when we started drawing big crowds, they saw that we were going in the right direction.”

METAMORPHOSIS
So why the change from Bad Monkey to Commmonfaced?
“We always had a desire to do our own songs,” says drummmer DC (Dave Crawford). “We also had two lineup changes and a summit meeting that led to a band shakeup. We came out of it with a stronger foundation. Now, we all write the songs.”
Members of Commmonfaced are all veterans of rock and metal bands from throughout the region. Dave Weber was originally in Riot Act. DC and his brother, guitarist Adam Crawford, were in the Petoskey-area band, Peril. Singer Ron Payne came out of SYN and estimates he knows 500 cover tunes by memory. Each of their parent bands were big on the Northern Michigan rock scene over the past 10 years or so.
But performing their own music has given the players a new reason for living, and the fans are coming along. “We’re still building a following,” Weber notes.
“We’re slowly converting people to the new band,” adds Adam Crawford.
“It felt like the most natural thing to do at the time,” DC says. “We’re 100 miles down the road from where Bad Monkey started.”
How did the Commonfaced name come about?
“I came up with it,” DC says. “I was doing a lot of sitting around in a dungeon basement and stewing in anger and I took a thesaurus and started looking for random word combinations. Commmonfaced is the one that stuck out to me. What I like about it is that the listener can come up with their own meaning for what the name is trying to say We’re not trying to tell you what Commonfaced means.”

THE SOUND
What brand of metal resonates with the band?
“I hate what people consider metal today,” DC says. “The triangle of our sound is metal, hardcore and progressive. We are not ‘80s metal.”
That translates to a furious, in-your-face sound with the rage-unleashed ethos that’s popular with metal fans today. On this score, Commonfaced delivers the goods.
And they’re taking their act on the road. Manager Anngie Linn says Commonfaced is playing St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit on June 22 as the only outstate band to perform with 10 of the Motor City’s finest metal groups at the Hittin’ Hard & Heavy Bash. They’ve also opened for national acts such as Nothingface, Mushroomhead and Powerman 5000 at Ground Zero and plan to hit the Detroit music scene this summer.
First, however, they’ll debut their new CD, “Delineate,” this Friday, June 9 at Ground Zero in a Summmerbash release party. Wear your “summer clothes” the band advises (code for bikinis, perhaps), and be prepared to get pumped and bang heads.
The 13-song CD is a big launch for the band, which is pushing their sound online through their MySpace site, CD Baby, iTunes and Yahoo Music. The album was recorded at the Crawford brothers’ studio in Petoskey, an under-the-gun experience that began last December and involved a lot of roadtime commuting from TC. Needless to say, CDs will be on sale at the upcoming show, with a special deal for those who visit www.commonfaced.com.

See Commonfaced with Once Was I this Friday, June 9 at Streeters Ground Zero. Admission to the 18-and-up show is $5.