| SIX MONTHS AFTER HUMAN WASTE PROJECT'S ABRUPT DEMISE, TWO NEW BANDS HAVE EMERGED IN LA. IN THE BLUE CORNER, THERE'S THE METALLIC POP OF AIMEE ECHO'S HERO.... |
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'Wasted In America' HERO **** A imee Echo begins to laugh. In the cramped dressing room upstairs at the LA rock club The Troubadour, the sound ricochets loudly off the sweat-stained walls like bullets. "Whatever you see tonight," she says, "please take with a grain of salt." The blonde singer covers an embarrassed smile with her hand. Aimee Echo is in the process of launching Hero, the band she put together from the ashes of Human Waste Project, and she's understandably nervous. "Hero has only been a band for two-and-a-half months," she explains. "We've only recently found a place to practise, so we haven't rehearsed at all." Downstairs the club is rapidly filling with fans and friends. In their all-too-brief career, Human Waste Project made plenty of both. Following the break-up, bassist Jeff Schartoff has returned to his earlier project, Professional Murder Music, and guitarist Mike Tempesta has joined Rob Zombie's kid brother Spider in Powerman 5000. Echo and drummer Scott Ellis formed Hero.  Musically, Hero are a different beast to Human Waste Project, substituting their grinding rock for a metallic pop sheen which reveals their love for both Joy Division and Radiohead. It's a sound that's as black as night and as cool as ice. reflecting on the change in attitude, Aimee says that in HWP she felt as if she was a screaming banshee onstage - the audience wouldn't accept her softer side. "I thought they'd go 'Oh, she's a sappy girl'," she groans. "That's fine too, but I do have a few more dimensions." Considering they're about to play only their fourth ever gig, Aimee Echo's bandmates look anything but nervous. Bassist Jamie Miller - a tall man with a sly sense of humour - has spent a good percentage of the last two years tearing up the road as the drummer with Santa Barbara punk-funk crew Snot. Ellis is cool and collected. Debonair guitarist Mike Smith - who grew up with Miller in Baltimore - couldn't possibly be any more relaxed. "Granted, this could just be the honeymoon phase," opines Echo, "but all of a sudden we are of one mind. Instead of in our old band's case where it was three or four."So what went wrong with HWP?? Despite being dropped by their US label Hollywood Records, things seemed to be looking up for the band. They'd just performed on the Kerrang! stage at the UK Ozzfest, but less than a month later Aimee was telling the House of Blues that it was all over. "Human Waste Project was a beautiful, wonderful thing," reflects Aimee now, "and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. But there was a lot of stuff I wanted to do that I didn't get to because the band was democratic. There were a lot of things that didn't go my way - which was totally great and fine, and I'm happy with everything that went on."Less pleasing for her was the band typecast. "We got lumped into this one particular genre of music," says Aimee. "When we first started Human Waste Project, what we wanted to do was to try and cross all boundaries, and we ended up getting thrown into this little category. We found that we were only allowed to play with heavy bands and we only got to play our heavy songs." She adds that HWP rarely performed some of her favourite, less testosterone-filled songs from their sole album, 'e-lux', such as 'One night in Spain', 'Electra' and 'Interlude'. Aimee's love for John Lennon - who titled one of his post-beatles songs 'Working Class Hero' - was a major factor in her decision to call her new band Hero. The quartet even cover the Fab Four's 'I am the Walrus' in their live set. After all the troubles of the recent past, Hero look and sound like a positive new beginning. "We're not angry any more," chirrups Smith. "The sun is shining! It's time to leave the darkness behind..." "No, it's not," wails Aimee, "the darkness is in my soul!" The more things change... HERO can be contacted via their website at : http://hero-zone.com Words: Joshua Sindell Photos: Lisa Johnson |
