Every new band must grind through getting the public to hear, let alone remember, its music. Sinisstar, currently opening for Rob Zombie, is no exception. The band is a perfect fit for the tour. The music is techno-inspired rock heavy on moods dark as its leather. As its debut record Future Shock is slated for a late May release. What does Sinisstar do to prepare for this? Play lots of shows and do lots of publicity. I was fortunate enough to have a phone conversation with Sinisstar’s vocalist Edgy, a cordial, nice guy who gave me the rundown on the band’s history. The following is an excerpt from that conversation.

Brad: This is the third big show you guys having been working with. You had the Limp Bizkit tour and the Adema tour.

Edgy: Yeah, this is our third real tour. So far this is the best. Going real well and the audience respond really well.

Brad: It’s pretty impressive that you’ve picked up three big shows without having the record out yet. How’d that come about?

Edgy: Well, the record’s been done for about a year, and the label is waiting to put it out at the right time. So, in order to keep us busy, we’ve been touring. The tour with Rob Zombie came about because we have the same management company and record company, so it sorta makes sense.

Brad: When it comes to the music, how did you guys end up coming up with the songs?

Edgy: We just write songs together as a band fairly well, and we like to write with our producers, whoever they may be at the time. We invite them into the song writing process as well so that we end up with better songs.

Brad: I got the record yesterday and I?ve given it three spins so far, and listening to it, I’ve heard a lot of different sounds put into it, hear a lot of different influences. Is that just because you have a lot of different tastes within the band, or were you trying to write an eclectic, diverse record?

Edgy: We wanted the record to be diverse, and we wanted it to stretch the limits of where a hard rock record should go. But we wanted to remain within the framework of what we established as our identity amongst ourselves. So kinda both. We wanted to stretch the limits but not outside the genre itself.

Brad: What is that identity? What are you trying to bring across?

Edgy: Texturally, musically, we wanted to build a wall of sound with this record. All of us really like records in the past that were produced in such a way that create a very wide, cinematic, powerful sound. So we’re trying to do that while still having the concepts of the songs and the ideas of the lyrics comfortably within that. We didn’t want the production of the record to overshadow the lyrics and meaning, and we didn’t want the lyrics and the meaning to be the only thing about the record. We wanted the production to reflect what they meant.

Brad: In particular, the two songs that stuck out to me were the Brendan O’Brien songs with “White Noise” and “Clear Plastic,” being probably the most catchy, much brighter, chorus-oriented songs. Is that why you tried to get somebody like an O’Brien to do these tracks?

Edgy: Working with Brendan came about (because) the record label needed a change of pace and sent us down to Atlanta and did the two songs with Brendan. The song “Clear Plastic” is about the watered-down mainstream world, so therefore it needed to reflect that, and it needed to be somewhat flimsily. You know what I mean, it needed to represent that catchiness. “White Noise” is one of those songs that just happened. It was written and recorded and mixed immediately. Whereas versus the other songs on the record took months, “White Noise” is very fast.

Brad: Those two do have a very different feel from the rest of the record. I wasn’t sure if that was due as a result of the different producer. I’m more familiar with Bob Marlette’s Alice Cooper recordings and those are very thick, very heavy, very bottom oriented, and for songs like “White Noise” and “Clear Plastic” the thicker chorus are very sharp contrasts.

Edgy: I sort of see it as being not much different. I see it releasing in a different way. Like in the chorus, the energy release in “White Noise,” it’s a sustained chord rather than a driving a picked chord. The vocal melodies and the vocal approach are basically the same. The sound design is a little lighter. We wanted to be a little more of a rock song, simpler. Our record had become very loaded with sound, and we wanted “White Noise” to reflect that new sort of freedom we felt when we went down to Atlanta. The pressures of being in Los Angeles weren’t there. We felt free with the record label encouraging us to break new ground and just went for it.

Brad: The long line of influences and different styles of records that you guys enjoyed as fans comes through in some of the music that you’re making.

Edgy: For me, I was an electronic musician for 12 years creating electronic noise and landscapes. Slowly but surely, I became reacquainted with my heavy metal roots which I had as a kid and blended the two together. A couple of other guys shared the same evolution, blending rock and the electronic stuff.

Brad: I?m an old school metal head, and that’s where I?m coming from. I can’t help but think of some of the Tim Skold stuff, the later Shotgun Messiah records or the Skold solo records.

Edgy: Skold? Skold’s one of my favorite industrial artists. He is

f—ing amazing. That’s cool as hell. No one’s ever said that to me before.

Brad: I’ll just draw on a couple more things I thought I heard. I heard aspects of Bowie on a couple of the songs.

Edgy: Sure, I wouldn’t say direct aspects. I would say the influence is there.

Brad: I heard it on “Spaceman” in particular.

Edgy: Yeah, people seem to be saying that. You’re the second or third guy to say that, which is cool.

Brad: Maybe it’s a construction of image as well as sound, but I heard a New York Dolls influence as well.

Edgy: Definitely. The in-your-face defiance of the sort of trashy metal like that is there.

Brad: There are a lot of electronic aspects, and there is a lot of studio work to give it that layered sound. How does that translate to on stage and performing it live?

Edgy: Performing these songs live is a little different. They have to be simplified because there’s so many sounds on the record we?d have to have a bunch of people up there to make the sounds. Obviously, it’s a little stripped-down version of the songs while still sounding virtually the same. The important parts are kept, and the more decorative parts are lost. So it’s really just us playing the song. There are a lot of electronics still that our drummer triggers. We come pretty close to sounding like the record.