Cleaner
by Thom Washburn
Are you sick of hearing only guys on the radio? Or maybe your looking for a band that can manage to mix the hard sounds of Korn or Limp Bizkit with the softer melodic side of bands like the Foo Fighters or Live. Either way, there’s a band out of Pasadena that’s got you covered. They are Cleaner, and they are creating new sonic waves.
“The ad I read said something like ‘Tori Amos meets Marilyn Manson,’” says lead singer Sarah Meech of the ad she read to find out about the try outs for the band. She was the last member to join, and the only one without any prior experience in a band. However, this doesn’t hinder her performance on stage at all, as she dominates it with a ferocity that can only be described as awesome.
Lead guitar player and programmer Eric Ediger initially conceptualized
the band, in the summer of 1996. “I
wanted to create a sound that meshed the current hard edged
industrial/alternative sound with a warmer, melodic sound.
I wanted to play hard and soft…to combine the digital and the
analog,” he has said in past interviews.
He convinced bassist Michael Renninger and drummer Ian Brumbaugh of a
local band, Dark Room, to play with him. Next,
he realized that to create a sound like he wanted, he would need another guitar
player. Kevin Shaw jammed with the three and immediately joined the
band.
Then came Sarah. “Eric wrote some of the songs before I joined. Now we collaborate on most of them, he comes up with the basic structure…[and] I do the lyrics, and we collaborate on the melodies.” When I asked her of her influences she said she listened to “Spooky music”. “Souixsie (of Souixsie and the Banshees), Tool, Eurythmics, the Cure,” she stated with no hesitation. The bands influences however are slightly more mainstream with bands like Black Sabbath and the Smashing Pumpkins.
With music, there is no such thing as a completely original band.
Some bands will take an idea that’s been done and do it again, but try
to add their own little spin on it. Some
bands will take something that’s been done, and redo it even better than the
original. Then there are other
bands, the bands like Cleaner, that take little pieces of every kind of music,
and transform it until its something that is better than all the original pieces
by themselves. They are a case of
the total being more than the sum of its parts.
Members:
Four
Sound:
Melodic Hard-Rock/Industrial
Albums:
“Cleaner”, available at shows and www.mp3.com/cleaner.
Website:
www.moreclean.com\