Browsing through your dictionary of innovative rock bands you can find Diffuser somewhere between pop culture and dissonance. Their major label debut Injury Loves Melody is a trademark of the band's ability to write honest, angular pieces of pure imaginative music while upholding strong conviction in their delivery. This album will take you on an emotional roller coaster through confusion, angst, and heartbreak.
Diffuser's been a band in one incarnation or another since March of 1994. Until last year, they were called Flu 13, a name sure to ring bells with indie-music fans. This NYC quartet were also no stranger to the road with marathon touring on miniature budgets, crashing on fan's couches, and proving their love of performing. That's six years to perfect a sound, and if Injury Loves Melody is any indication, it's been six years spent well.
But why the name change? Drummer Billy Alemaghides explains: "We just got so sick of all the name/number band names saturating the market, and being a band that always strives to be different, we had to make the change."
That explanation goes a long way in illustrating Diffuser's place in the post-alternative-rock world. Not quite rock, not quite punk, not quite pop, the band avoid the pitfalls of falling in line with the countless bands banging away on their instruments by creating a sound straight from the heart, one that's been picked up from the lonely stretches of adolescent memory and polished to a gleam.
"What's important to me is trying to take the best elements of all our influences, chew them up and spit them at you," guitarist Anthony Cangelosi says. Indeed, the sound of Injury Loves Melody is rich with the titans of the band members' pasts: from old-school standbys Kiss, Van Halen and Led Zeppelin to new-school standard-bearers Sonic Youth and Sunny Day Real Estate.
In fact, if the band have one special knack, it's their ability to meld the past to the present,hotwiring classic rock's technical and muscular bombast to indie rock's heart-on-sleeve intimacy.
Take a listen to the explosive "I Am," Injury Loves Melody's lead track, and see if you're not moved-physically and emotionally.
Singer Tomas Costanza explains the link: "What I loved about this music was that it was exciting. It had such a raw energy to it." Bassist Lawrence Sullivan is more direct: "There's nothing like hanging out with my denim jacket, Iron Maiden T-shirt and a comb hanging out of my tight-ass jeans."
These four guys - Alemaghides, Cangelosi, Costanza and Sullivan - are no strangers to making powerful records. During the Flu 13 administration, they made a couple of them, including a blistering debut seven-inch single with underground trophy engineer Steve Albini and 1998's attention-grabbing In the Foul Key of V, recorded with former Jawbox frontman and current punk-rock producer extraordinaire J. Robbins, a man known for his stellar work with indie heroes the Promise Ring and Jets to Brazil.
That record, recorded for respected independent label Interplanetary Truckers Union but released by Medicine Records after ITU's untimely demise, set the stage for Injury Loves Melody, garnering rave reviews from 'zines across the country in love with the band's soaring, dynamic epics. But to use a well-worn cliche, you ain't heard nothing yet. That's where Injury Loves Melody, produced by skilled knob-twirler Don Gilmore, comes in. And that's where we find Diffuser today: primed for the big leagues with a beautiful, honest record in tow - not to mention first single "Karma"'s spot on the Mission:Impossible 2 soundtrack, a spot which will surely earn them the attention they've had coming for a while.
Ultimately, this record is about growing up and finding your niche in life. Packed with anthems, songs of coming of age and asking the question that we all fear: "What have you done with your life?" Diffuser certainly knows what it is doing; conquering new fans, one listener at a time.