 band
members . . .Josh Brown – vocals Jonathan Montoya–guitar
Mark Reaves – guitar
discography . . . about the band...The Jackson, Tennessee based Full Devil Jacket began life in
1995 when drummer Keith Foster and guitarist Mike Reaves were planning a
new project and needed another guitar player. After connecting with bass
player Kevin Bebout, they completed the lineup with vocalist Josh Brown
and second guitarist Jonathan Montoya.
Local shows in front of fanatical audiences led to demo recordings, a management deal, and a "local artist" slot at the WXTB Livestock festival in Tampa, which caught the attention of Island Records. The band’s first high-profile gig outside the South, an appearance on the "Emerging Artists" stage at Woodstock ’99, stopped the crowd dead in their tracks, turning them into a packed, chaotic, completely converted audience. Similar experiences occurred on 1999’s Warped Tour.
However, this was just a prelude to the full-on
revelation of their first full-length album, which takes the basic sound
established on A Wax Box… to the next level. There’s still
plenty of crunching, powerfully heavy grooves and frighteningly intense
vocals on hand, but songs like "Monster" and "Where Did
You Go" add new layers of texture, melody, and depth to the
band’s sound. The banks of the Mississippi are awash with tales of good and
evil, sin and salvation, choices between darkness or light. On this
album, Full Devil Jacket’s monstrously heavy sound brings forth images
of the region, a swampy undercurrent permeating their edgy vocals and
music.
Brown’s lyrics deal with spiritual issues – he is
unafraid to face his demons, question sin and temptation, and deal with
the darker, seedier side of life. "The songs deal with drugs,
relationships, childhood – all the basic themes of life and how we
deal with them every day," says the moody, mysterious singer.
"Everything either comes from personal experience or things I grew
up around." Whatever his inspiration, Brown’s emotionally
wrenching vocals perfectly complement the twisting musical fury and
pounding, hard-edged grooves that instantly place his band at the
forefront of heavy rock’s new school. Full Devil Jacket has also contributed songs to the soundtracks of Scream 3 (which includes music by Powerman 5000, Static-X, Godsmack, and Creed) and Heavy Metal 2000 (out in April), and there’s more touring on the horizon as well. "I’ve been all over America in the last four months," concludes Brown. "Everyone out there is a slave to their own life. If there’s one thing I’d like to do with my music, it’s to free somebody else from the chains that society has put on their minds. That’s part of our mission."
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
Then
on October 5th, 1999, the world got its first recorded taste of Full
Devil Jacket on a five-song EP titled A Wax Box To Put Your
Frankenstein Heads In. The track "Stain" landed airplay in
major markets like Tampa, Denver, Phoenix, Detroit, Orlando, Boston,
Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Miami, with the accompanying video
being shown on MTV’s "120 Minutes." FDJ was also handpicked
by Megadeth to appear on an Extra Value CD that came with the first
100,000 copies of the most recent Megadeth album, Risk. 
"Heavy
metal" and "aggro rock" don’t begin to do justice to
the dark-hued, often unearthly vortex of sound that these five musicians
from Jackson, Tennessee, create. A jackhammer rhythm section and
torrents of thick guitars establish a formidable backdrop for the vocals
of Mississippi-born singer Josh Brown, whose wrath-fueled voice is
capable of summoning both heaven and hell. 