COURTESY ALIEN ANT FARM The alt-metal SoCal band gets a second life: clockwise from top are drummer Mike Cosgrove, bassist Tye Zamora, guitarist Joe Hill and singer Dryden Mitchell.

Alien Ant Farm
on rebound trail

It's back to basics for Alien Ant Farm, the alt-metal quartet from Southern California who hit it big with a remake of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" in 2001.

Alien Ant Farm With openers Missing Dave, Justin Black and Stories Under Stone Where: Kapono's, Aloha Tower Marketplace When: 7 p.m. Saturday Tickets: $20 Call: 536-2100

After enduring a life-threatening bus crash, an unsuccessful follow-up album and the departure of the band's lead guitarist, the guys have regrouped and are preparing to release new material. Before kicking off a full-blown tour next month, they visit Hawaii this weekend for a show at Kapono's and a few days of rest and relaxation.

"I was happy making the new record, but I haven't been this excited to travel somewhere in a long time," admitted vocalist Dryden Mitchell earlier this week by phone from California. "That bus crash kind of killed any kind of travel for me, but this should be pretty sweet."

ALONG WITH bassist Tye Zamora, drummer Mike Cosgrove and original guitarist Terry Corso, Mitchell formed Alien Ant Farm nine years ago in Riverside, Calif. The four childhood friends shared an interest in making music and spent all their free time trying to turn a hobby into a successful career.

"If we could get three or four days off at a time, we would do shows all the way up to San Francisco and Arizona and all the way back," Mitchell said. "Before we knew it, we were getting like three to five hundred people in 10 different cities up and down the West Coast."

In 1999, the group independently released "Greatest Hits," a collection of demo recordings that would go on to win the award for Best Independent Album at that year's L.A. Music Awards. A friendship with Northern California rockers Papa Roach lead them to sign with New Noize, a former imprint of DreamWorks that released "ANThology" in 2001 and "TruANT" in 2003.

But it was the 2002 bus tragedy in Spain that almost derailed the group. The crash killed their driver and put another crew member in a coma, while Mitchell suffered a broken neck and was dangerously close to becoming paralyzed.

"I got to experience something that a lot of people will never get to feel," he said. "I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but coming out of it was a cool thing, too, you know?"

Just over a year later, "TruANT" hit record stores as DreamWorks began to falter. The label would end up being sold to Geffen, but the transaction's timing meant promotional support of current releases would be almost non-existent.

"It was so unorganized. ... It just got silly," Mitchell said. "We would have rather sat on that record for a year and let Geffen put it out."

KEEPING WITH the new-album-every-two-years schedule, Alien Ant Farm recently finished working with producer Jim Wirt in the same Malibu studio where Incubus recorded "Morning View."

With another childhood friend, guitarist Joe Hill, now on board, the band spent most of last year developing new songs. When Wirt got involved in the recording process earlier this year, he took a listen and immediately noticed something was wrong.

"We did a bunch of these mellow, kind of like sad songs," said Mitchell. "But when he came in, he said we sounded old. It wasn't about age, but I got was he was saying."

So they went back and reworked almost everything, giving the songs a harder edge that would draw comparisons with Alien Ant Farm's earliest work. The result is a self-titled album that's expected to be released later this year.

Will the masses accept the new music, especially those fair weather fans who were drawn in by "Smooth Criminal" and might not be familiar with their harder stuff?

"Those probably aren't the people who are going to buy the new record," Mitchell conceded. "We do have a lot to prove. This is a do-or-die moment for us.

"But it's our own pressure, you know? We know how much hard work it is to go out there in a van with a trailer and convince kids we're good."

www.alienantfarm.com