Singer Mongoose McQueen has left Fozzy and been replaced by WWE wrestler Chris Jericho.
Confused? Thought McQueen and Jericho were one and the same? Well, not anymore. After two records as the boastful, obnoxious McQueen, Jericho will put his alter ego to rest with the fall release of Fozzy's All That Remains.
When Fozzy released their self-titled debut in 2000, Jericho and Stuck Mojo guitarist Rich Ward conceived a back story that was almost as ridiculous and entertaining as the plot of "This Is Spinal Tap." Fozzy, as the legend went, were an early-'80s metal band who wrote a long list of classic tunes, then languished in Japan for 20 years because they'd signed a bad record deal.
While Fozzy were trapped in the Far East, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, the Scorpions and others stole Fozzy's songs and turned them into international hits. When they were finally able to return to the U.S., Fozzy re-recorded their hits and released them on two albums, along with a smattering of new songs.
"The story had really played itself as far as it can go," Jericho said. "It was kind of a fun thing at the time, but we realized this band is really kick-ass, and our original stuff is really good. So we decided we should do all original stuff and take it as far as we could from there."
All That Remains will feature material influenced by a cross-section of '80s metal legends and contemporary rockers. The songs will run the gamut from melodic hard rock to thrash to extreme metal. "If you took Metallica crossed with Iron Maiden crossed with Saliva crossed with Journey, you might get an idea of what Fozzy sounds like now," Jericho said.
To load up the album with maximum firepower, Jericho recruited a bunch of guest musicians. Most of them — Black Label Society/Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde, former Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti and ex-Megadeth shredder Marty Friedman — were pretty obvious choices, but Bone Crusher? Fozzy hooked up with the crunk MC early this year after they found out he's a huge wrestling fan, a big Jericho supporter and a fan of Fozzy's first two discs (see "Fozzy Get Crunk With Bone Crusher On New Album").
"He's not your typical rapper," Jericho said. "His voice is very heavy. He could be singing for Slayer or Testament. I'm not all that familiar with the rap world — Young MC, Ice-T and Ice Cube is about as far as I go. But Bone Crusher was almost like a musical genius. He came in and listened to the part on the song 'It's a Lie' for about three minutes, wrote some stuff down, went into the booth and about five minutes later came back and said, 'Do you want the next verse?' And what he did was very catchy and very cool. It's not a rap-metal song like you would hear Rage Against the Machine do. It sounds more like something the Beatles would have come up with."
The recording with Tremonti was more spontaneous. Jericho first learned of the guitarist's interest when they were introduced in a club by a mutual friend. Tremonti told the wrestler/rocker he'd love to play an acrobatic guitar solo with Fozzy because he never got to do that in Creed, then the two went their separate ways. That was that — until Fozzy wound up recording in the same Atlanta studio as Tremonti's new group, Alter Bridge (see "Life After Creed: Alter Bridge Look To A Stapp-Free Future").
"I went down there and said, 'Hey, man, are you still interested in doing a track with us?,' and he was totally into it," Jericho said. "We found a song that was perfect for him ['The Way I Am'], and he just let it rip. He enjoyed it so much, then his singer, Miles Kennedy, came down and laid some backing vocals on another one of our songs."
The old Fozzy would surely have claimed they stole guitarist Marty Friedman away from Megadeth, which is why he's absent from Megadeth's new record, The System Has Failed. The revamped Fozzy, however, get more mileage out of the straight story. Friedman was a big fan of Fozzy producer Rick Beato's former band Billionaire, and over the years, the two became friends. So even after Friedman moved to Japan, Beato was able to track him down to deliver a frenetic solo for "Born of Anger."
"Rick e-mailed Marty and said, 'I got this track I'd love for you to play on,' and Marty said, 'Anything for you, man,' " said Jericho. "It's the heaviest song on the record, full of all these different thrash and black-metal parts, and there's an Indian-sounding part in the middle, so we had Marty put down a crazy solo over that. He went into a studio in Japan, recorded the track and then e-mailed it to us, and it sounds amazing."
Other numbers on All That Remains include "Nameless Faceless," about a homeless man who used to be rich; "Enemy" and "Wanderlust," which are both relationship songs; and "Daze of the Weak," which addresses rising from a pit of depression.
Fozzy will tour to support the new album, though their schedule will be dictated by Jericho's day job. "We'll go to a town and I'll wrestle, then I'll go to the gig and we'll play," he said. "Now, more than ever, we're ready to go out and do it. This is the real deal."
