Full On Flyhead is a Classic Rock band. Period. End of Story. Simple. Well…maybe not quite so simple. Does it mean that Flyhead would fit right in to the county fair circuit with the Dinosaurs of Rock? Not quite, although the people lucky enough to be at those fairs would have their corndogs rocked clean off. Nor does it mean this is a young band that is self-consciously aping the style of a genre whose day in the sun has long past as a cynical marketing stunt. Nothing could be further from the truth. Flyhead is a Classic Rock band in ethos as much as it is in sound.
First, the sound: the starting point of the sound is the early 1970s realization that something special, bordering on magical, happens when a band takes their songs to a place that emphasizes a largeness in both size and weight. This band's music is enormously expansive, even in the quiet moments, when its crouching and biding its time before it explodes. From the groovy funk of a song like "Bubble Hill" to the prog-metal experimentation of a song like "Little Man" there is a quality to Flyhead's music that allows it endlessly grow to fill every available space in a concert hall (which, incidentally, is the only way to get the full Full On Flyhead experience) or in your brain (where, incidentally, you won't be able to get their guitar lines, drum fills, and vocal growls out of). Yeah, its big, but its also heavy. This heaviness is where the classic rock really comes in. Take Led Zeppelin, for example. They weren't always the loudest or most brutal band in the world (those honors going to Blue Cheer and Deathklok respectively) but they were always one click away from the deepest, heaviest groove imaginable. That's what Flyhead can do. They can, at any moment, just go click, and then its on.
Second, the ethos: maybe they're a Classic Rock band but, just listen for 30 seconds, and its pretty obvious that this music could not have been made in 1973. The dudes in Flyhead live and breathe every single nook and cranny of rock and roll cannon and beyond. When a band gives equal influential weight to Tool as it does to Danny Elfman, its clear that there are no limitations to where the music can go. It can go from Iraq, to Funky Town, to Mars, to Axl Rose's powder room…all in the course of a single song. That, in essence, is the ethos of Full On Flyhead: no fucking limitations.
If that's not the definition of Classic, well, someone needs to have to conversation with Webster because it sure as shit should be.~Aaron Sankin, writer for Crawdaddy Rock Magazine.Search for us on Youtube.com under Full On Flyhead for live video.
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