MEDICATION

MEDICATION- R.I.P/// THANK YOU...CHRIS HAMILTON, ROY MAYORGA, ROBERT TRUJILLO, SHANNON LARKIN, JOSH FREESE, CRAZY JAYSON......AND THE SWISS TAG TEAM FOR PLAYING WITH US!!!!!!!!!AND A BIG THANX TO DARREN FOR /REDEFININGSIN.COM/ ROCK ON!!!!Guitarist Logan Mader and vocalist Whitfield Crane first met while Mader was in Machine Head. They became friends in 1998 on what vocalist Crane calls 'the greatest Ozzfest of them all' when Life Of Agony and Soulfly were on the bill. "I hit it off with Logan immediately," recalls Crane. "We were thick as thieves and that was it for me. I thought, wow, I'll probably jam with that guy one day. We'd hang out and do whatever, get into trouble. Steal golf carts, fuck around, support each other musically. We didn't really know at that time we were going to be jammin'. You connect with people. Sometimes you don't. But there was an absolute connection as friends, basically toxic twins."Logan quit Soulfly in January 1999, recorded a 3-track demo and then Whit, who had just left Life Of Agony, called and said 'Dude, What's the deal?' and Mader, who had already heard the news about LOA, happily replied 'It looks like we're in a band.' The natural evolution continued with guitarist Blunt, who met Mader when his band Adayinthelife were opening for Soulfly, and the two plotted a future side-project. Crane's next step was the time honoured tradition of moving the band into a house in Hollywood where they all lived and worked together for the next 18 months, creating the songs that would define their self-titled debut EP, due for release on 8th April on Locomotive through Cargo, and album, 'Prince Valium', due to be unleashed on June 24th. The pure, heavy rock flowed, not filled with anger, but with searching and questioning ripped from the depths of Crane's soul.The band decided on Medication as their moniker, (Mader; 'Music is my life, music is my medication'), recruited Kyle Sanders on bass along with ex-Soulfly drummer Ray Mayorga and began honing new songs down live on the gig circuit in LA. In April 2001 the band secured management and booking deals and recorded the 5 tracks that comprise their self titled debut EP. In November 2001 the group played a series of low key dates in Europe, which led to their new record deal early in 2002.Medication are the first US signing to Locomotive Music, the international heavy rock label and distributor based in Spain. Both the group's EP and debut album 'Prince Valium' were produced by Medication and Bill Kennedy (Nine Inch Nails, Monster Magnet, Sepultura, Alice In Chains, Jackoff Jill) and rock like bastards!Forceful and heavy yet consistently melodic, Medication is a Los Angeles-based alternative rock combo that includes ex-members of Soulfly, Machine Head, dayinthelife, Skrew, Life of Agony, and Ugly Kid Joe. For all its intensity and aggression, the band is never without a strong sense of melody. Medication isn't the sort of alterna-rock outfit that believes in bombast for the sake of bombast; their songs tend to be hard-driving yet intricate. All five members of Medication, which formed in L.A. in the late '90s, have belonged to other alternative rock and/or alternative metal bands. Lead singer Whitfield Crane was with Life of Agony and Ugly Kid Joe, while guitarist B-Blunt is a graduate of dayinthelife and bassist Kyle Sanders is a former member of Piece Dog and Skrew. Guitarist Logan Mader and drummer Roy "Rata" Mayorga have both been with Soulfly; Mader is also a graduate of Machine Head and Mayorga belonged to a band called Thorn before he joined Soulfly in 1996. The ones who first got the ball rolling for Medication were Crane and Mader, who became friends in 1998 at Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest. At that point, Crane was still with Life of Agony, which, like Soulfly, was among the bands on the 1998 Ozzfest bill. When Crane's role as Life of Agony's lead singer ended in early 1999, he was ready to start a new band with Mader. Later that year, Crane and Mader joined forces with B-Blunt and Mayorga; with that four-man lineup in place, Medication (which was originally called the Pale Demons) played its first show at the Gig, a club on Hollywood's trendy Melrose Avenue. The thing that Medication lacked during its early months was a full-time bassist, but the band solved that problem after hiring Sanders at the recommendation of drummer Dan Richardson. Crane knew Richardson from Life of Agony, although the drummer had been with Pro-Pain before that. Sanders was still living in Atlanta when Richardson informed him that Medication was looking for a bassist; when Medication decided that Sanders was the man for the job, he moved to L.A. After playing the L.A./Hollywood club scene consistently in 2000, Medication went on a national tour in 2001. And in early 2002, the band signed with Spain's Locomotive Music, which had decided to open an L.A. office. Medication was Locomotive's first American signing; before Medication, the label was known for European acts such as Spain's Tierra Santa, the Netherlands' Elegy, and Finland's Lost in Tears. Locomotive released Medication's self-titled debut EP in the U.S. in early April 2002.////////// ~ Alex Henderson