Piston Honda is an alternative metal band — taking the heaviness of
metal and giving it more of a post-punk twist with weightier, more thoughtful
lyrics (judging from what little I could make out) and less visual and musical
excess. From their clean-cut looks to their lean, hard sound, Piston Honda is
atypical of the post-Korn brand of heavy bands, instead evoking more hardcore-
oriented, early-Nineties bands such as Helmet and Quicksand, bands that Honda
lead-singer/guitarist Jake Cook expresses admiration for.
According to Cook, the band formed in 1998 with the moniker
Further, changing to Piston Honda (the name of a Japanese competitor in the
video game Mike Tyson’s Punchout) in 1999. The band consists of Cook,
22, a Rhodes student; guitarist Jason Babin, 22, a CBU student; bassist
Patrick Umstad, 22, a U of M student; and 18-year-old drummer Austin Morlan.
The band has played out-of-town sparingly so far, which Cook says is a result
of the band members’ academic commitments. But they have been in the studio:
Piston Honda released their debut album, Paradigm Shift, last December.
It was recorded locally at Nustar by Robert Picon and Justin Short.
At a recent show at Last Place on Earth, the band was a mixed
bag. Honda proved to be a tight, unflashy hard-rock band whose music seemed to
be based on emotional commitment rather than commercial calculation, and they
employed stop-start dynamics to nice effect. The standout this night was
Morlan, who is a powerhouse of a drummer. Unfortunately, the band’s songs
tended to run together, lacking both strong melodies and hooks and the grab-
you-by-your-throat aggression of the best punk and hardcore — though I guess
I could make the same complaint about the genre itself. It may have been an
off night, but though Piston Honda came off as a serious and solid band, an
already sparse crowd just got sparser as the set wound down. — Chris
Herrington
To schedule your group’s Moment of Truth, call Chris
Herrington at 575-9428 or e-mail him at herrington@memphisflyer.com.
