Minus-One's new album combines two studio efforts

Band of the week

Friday, April 10, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo Minus-One's new album is on iTunes. Live, the band plays nothing but original songs. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

In 2007 Minus-One won the annual battle of the bands competition at the DC 101 Chili Cookoff. Playing for 20,000 people in Washington, D.C., the Waldorf band's competition included the West Coast hard rock outfit, Buckcherry.

A week later, Minus-One was asked to open for the alt-metal group Godsmack and that same year was invited to perform at RFK Stadium for Blocktoberfest. Recently the band played at Shamrock Fest, another big Washington, D.C. festival.

The Waldorf band has more than 30,000 friends on its MySpace Web site, but if you ask Pete Bulka of Waldorf how things are going, Minus-One's founder, lyricist, lead singer and guitarist will talk about how the band is struggling to reach the next level — to cross over completely from a local favorite to a nationally touring band, a path trod in recent years by Waldorf's Good Charlotte and then Mechanicsville's Wakefield.

In 2001, drummer Aaron Escolopio left Good Charlotte after five years to join his brother, Ryan Escolopio, in Wakefield. Shortly after he made the switch, the power pop-punk band announced it had been signed by Atlantic Records. (A few weeks ago Wakefield announced plans to release a new album.)

Wakefield's manager, the Escolopio's father, Dan Escolopio, had been instrumental in securing Good Charlotte a deal early on, and in 2007 Escolopio had been trying to push Minus-One's five-song demo, which members of Wakefield had helped produce, Bulka said.

Nothing much came of it, and Bulka started working on some new songs in Waldorf's Nightsky Studios with different tunings and an alternative production method striving for live rawness over a "squeaky clean" sound. "Morning Light, Starry Night," which was released on iTunes recently, includes both of these efforts, making it essentially two discs in one.

"When people ask, ‘What do you sound like?,' I can't really give them an answer," Bulka said. "I think we have our own style."

Leading off with new material, the invigorating album speeds through five high-powered tunes of pop-punk meets indie rock packed with catchy hooks and driving guitar. Clint Moore of Bryans Road, the other mainstay in Minus-One, provides a metal drummer's beat (Donovan Willis is the band's current bassist), and Bulka, who produced all the vocals on the album, often provides a high-pitched falsetto counterpoint to his own throaty, scratchy yells and generally cagey tone.

After a foot-stomping tune called "Stoner," Minus-One delves into the past — three edgy yet finely-distilled tracks sandwiched between a ballad and an acoustic number called "Some That Way." There are bound to be some who like one end of "Morning Light, Starry Night" more than the other.

But "I really try to be in the middle," Bulka said, "where everyone can grab a little something."

dmercer@somdnews.com

If you go

Minus-One will perform April 11 at Hulas Bungalow, 23900 N. Patuxent Beach Road, California