BURNING BRIDES

Fall of the Plastic Empire

V2 Records

From the grunge-era of yesteryear comes, like a phoenix risen from the ashes in the form a musical trio, the Burning Brides. A fusion of the Ramones, Nirvana, The Vines and a bit of Queens of the Stone Age, the Burning Brides are a force causing just what their album’s title says: (the) fall of the plastic empire (of rock).

“We were sick of turning on the television and the radio and being disgusted by everything around us musically,” singer/guitarist Dimitri Coats recalled in an interview from Sept. 4 from MTV.com. “It was similar to the late 80s, really. Puff Daddy was like Bobby Brown, ‘N Sync was like New Kids on the Block and Creed was like Bon Jovi.”

The trio is comprised of singer/guitarist Dimitri Coats, bassist Melani Campbell and drummer Jason Kourkounis. Kourkounis comes from Philadelphia, but the couple of Dimitri and Melani met during their college years at New York’s Juilliard performing-arts school.

Burning Brides signed with V2 Records, which re-released their album, Fall of the Plastic Empire (previously issued by File 13 in 2001) this year.

The album, particularly songs like “Rainy Days” and the U.K. single “Glass Slipper,” rocks hard but isn’t afraid to invoke a little pop either. Coats, whose vocal influences range from Jim Morrison to Iggy Pop, punctuates the aggressive tracks with refreshingly honest lyrics, such as, “You f-ed me over, and I just got a couple words to say to you and this is one of them, you got the tongue of a snake,” he belts out in “Stabbed in the Back of the Heart.”

Though they may sound like just another band riding the wave of new grunge/punk rock, the Burning Brides stand out from the others, such as the White Stripes or The Vines, with both their versatility in style and with their bittersweet, honest lyrics.

While his songs seem to tell stories, Coats said he actually writes single lines at a time and then later strings them together – much the same way Kurt Cobain pieced together his anthems.

“The cool thing about Kurt is he would write a sincere line and then feel a little too vulnerable about it, so he would follow it up with something really dark to f- with it or mangle with the image,” Coats said in the MTV interview. “That’s a big part of what we are. Even our name is a fusion of something dark and beautiful.”

Burning Brides have their second album written, but they won’t record it until next summer, after they are finished supporting Fall of the Plastic Empire with several tours of the United States and Europe, where they happen to be the buzz band of the moment.

“We already toured there once, and we might as well have been Nirvana,” Coats joked to MTV.com. “They love American rock and roll. They’ll eat it up and throw it on the cover of NME and call it the next big thing.”

The Burning Brides have the power and conviction of their idols, who also used rock to fight the system of corporate music. Don’t expect to see these guys on MTV anytime soon, but believe they are the voice of a musical revolution.

Information from MTV.com was used in this article.