Album Notes

Take a closer look at the current music scene and it's obvious there's little below the surface. Prefab pop princes and princesses, and disposable rock washouts who spend more time on their images and gimmicks than on their music, remain the dominant sound.

But "Take A Closer Look," by the hard-rocking Atlanta quartet Wastegate, is a debut album with depth, which aims to do what every truly great band has accomplished: make popular music meaningful and valid again. To Wastegate, it's not just a few notes plucked on a guitar or several quick cracks on a snare drum that make what they do important. It's the emotion - the need to get under people's skin and tap into what really makes them tick. And with the release of "Take A Closer Look" -- filled with mature songwriting, intricate guitar licks, chest-caving bass, thundering drums, accessible melodies and pure passion in every performance -- it's obvious that Wastegate has made that emotional connection, one supported by a fanatic and ever-growing regional fanbase.

Wastegate's honesty begins at square one: the desire to process and refine influences as diverse as Alice In Chains, Pink Floyd, Prince, Metallica, Kyuss, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Megadeth and create a sound completely their own. Guitarist Chad Watson explains, "We were basically fed up with most of what we were hearing so we set out to write the music that we wanted to hear." Band members have no problem telling anyone they meet that their music is written for themselves before anyone else. "The way we see it, if we aren't 150 percent satisfied with what we are doing then we can't expect anyone else to be satisfied either. It has to be for ourselves before anyone else," says vocalist/guitarist Gogi Randhawa.

The band essentially formed over the Internet in 2001, through various online ads placed by the individual members. It wasn't an easy process; previously a five-piece, the group was forced to dismiss two vocalists who weren't able to summon the sound that Wastegate was born to produce. After countless auditions, the band decided that the right man for the position had been there all along, and Gogi Randhawa stepped up to become the voice of Wastegate. Then, following two years of gigging that established them as one of the top live acts in Atlanta and the Southeast, and on the eve of releasing their long-awaited debut, personal tensions within the band led to the very difficult and emotional dismissal of their bassist, and almost resulted in the demise of Wastegate.

Halted on the verge of breaking through, the resulting auditions were dispiriting to the remaining band members, and yielded no replacements. However, drummer Devin Nutter then happened to meet a local bassist named Jason Smith who had Wastegate's most prized quality: musical intensity. "From the first time I went out with him, I felt like he was the guy. There was something about the vibe." The intuition proved correct, as Smith had used all his free time away from his firefighter's job to learn the Wastegate repertoire, and wowed the band during a tryout.

Now with the final lineup set, the release of their eagerly-anticipated new album, and an explosive live show that captures all the emotion and intensity that is Wastegate, Randhawa, Watson, Nutter, and Smith are primed to take on the world and any challenges it poses. Not to be dismissed as just another cookie-cutter, trend following band, Wastegate urges everyone to refrain from stopping at the surface and "Take A Closer Look."