By DAN ARMONAITIS
As the frontman for Spartanburg-based progressive pop-rock outfit The Consumers, Joe Power has spent more than a decade crafting melodic songs that are sometimes edgy but almost always accessible.
With his new band, Buffalohead, Power has a different mission.
“My goal is to melt your face and make your ears bleed,” said Power, who formed the ultra-heavy three-piece outfit a couple of years ago with drummer Michael Strassburg and lead guitarist Erik Pitts.
Buffalohead will celebrate the release of its debut album, “Ms. Andry,” when it shares a bill with fellow Upstate-based bands Black River Rebels and MuscleFoot on Saturday, Feb. 22 at The Radio Room in Greenville.
Power serves as Buffalohead’s primary songwriter and lead vocalist while also playing bass through an amp he’s dubbed “Murder Two” as a nod to the late Motorhead bassist and frontman Lemmy Kilmister, who famously called his amp “Murder One.”
“I’m bringing the guns, man,” Power said. “I’ve got an old, early ’90s Pea bass and a massive Ampeg stack that’s as tall as me, if not taller, and I just crank it up. I play a Tube Screamer (pedal) so I make it distorted and heavy and chunky.”
As a whole, Buffalohead creates a powerful sound that falls somewhere between Queens of the Stone Age and The White Stripes. Power, the oldest member of the group by several years, described his bandmates as “next level.”
“I’m the least talented person in the band, for sure,” Power said. “All I’m doing is playing bass guitar and singing while the other two are putting on a freaking clinic on what to do with heavy duty and blues-rock solos.
“Kind of our deal is to be the loudest and biggest three-piece ever. Most people who have listened to us have said, ‘it sounds like more than three people when y’all play,’ and that’s always my favorite compliment.”
Power said Buffalohead began soon after he reached out to Strassburg and Pitts, asking if they’d be interested in turning some of the songs he had written into “heavy duty, insanely loud” music.
“This was just stuff that I kept to myself that wasn’t appropriate for The Consumers or appropriate for any other band, really,” Power said. “I’m heavily influenced by Nirvana, so I was like, ‘OK, three-piece band, let’s write some grungy rock ‘n’ roll songs that are super catchy but heavy as hell.'”
Of the nine songs featured on “Ms. Andry,” nearly half were taken from material Power wrote prior to the formation of Buffalohead while the rest are new compositions. Collectively, they form a singular story that is told from the perspective of a child who, along with his siblings, has to work on a farm where their mother is a Jezebel-like figure.
“I can’t write an album unless it has some sort of a concept,” Power said. “With The Consumers stuff, it was more like a novel, whereas this is more like a short story. Ms. Andry, which is obviously a play on words for ‘misandry,’ lures men into her house with the promise of a good time. Then, she kills them, buries them in the garden, uses them as fertilizer and feeds her family with I guess the fruits and vegetables that come from that.
“She makes the kids dig the holes and bury the bodies. … What eventually happens is they stand up to her and find a way to escape.”
While it might sound like dark material, the songs are actually catchy even as they’re being cranked out in a sonically forceful manner. And there is definitely room for crossover appeal with longtime fans of The Consumers.
“If you take all the hard songs off all three albums (by The Consumers), that’s kind of what (Buffalohead) sounds like,” Power said. “The Consumers were mostly super melodic, but there are some heavy duty songs on each album, so if you like ‘The Chase,’ ‘The Brother’ and ‘Welcome to America’ from The Consumers, then you’re going to love Buffalohead.”
Since its formation, Buffalohead has played numerous gigs opening for other bands, including Witchpit, III Kings, Beithemeans and Brigades as well as the Greenville-based Black River Rebels, which is headlining this weekend’s show at The Radio Room.
“We’ve played at Ground Zero (in Spartanburg) and in Columbia and Charleston throughout the last couple of years, but it’s not really official until you record an album, which we did last fall,” Power said. “Being able to do that has been good. Now we need to get it into people’s hands and let them listen to it.”