Alien Ant Farm

What's it about?

You might think you know Alien Ant Farm. Far from it. Almost a decade after their last album "Always And Forever" (2014), the alternative metal quartet from Southern California - singer Dryden Mitchell, guitarist Terry Corso, bassist Timmy P, and drummer Mike Cosgrove - returns with "~mAntras~". An album that not only overturns all prejudices about the band but also impressively catapults them back into the center of the music world. The sixth studio album by the band, founded in 1996, is marked by personal changes and maturation processes and represents something of a new beginning for such an old band - without denying the past. On the contrary: "~mAntras~" is a profound, thoughtful work that emerged from numerous strokes of fate and trials. The songs take the listener not only musically but - as the title suggests - also on a personal and spiritual journey. After such a long break without new material, Alien Ant Farm had a lot to catch up on. In fact, they had already recorded four songs years earlier - including the Wham! cover version "Everything She wAnts" released in 2020 - but then the pandemic slowed everything down. "When the song came out back then," Mitchell recounts, "the idea was to just keep pushing. But life got in the way. We had arguments with our producer, and I personally drank a lot and was just unhappy with my life. It might sound dramatic, but I felt like I had to get myself together first. Normally, in such phases, you rely on friends, but in a band, it's a bit like a marriage. I don't know exactly what bothered me, I don't want to blame the band, but I just needed distance to get back on my feet. If I'm no good to myself, I'm no good to anyone else. So we took a break - and in hindsight, that was the best decision because we came back so much stronger with a clear head. We just had to hit the reset button." "A lot of shit happened in those years," Corso adds. "We had great success very early on and fortunately are still here. The band has experienced extreme setbacks, and this album is the result - kind of the soundtrack to it." Since their breakthrough in 2001 with "Movies" and the legendary Michael Jackson cover version "Smooth Criminal," Alien Ant Farm has been through a lot, but the time between "Always And Forever" and "~mAntras~" was particularly hard. No wonder then that much of it is reflected in the eleven songs. "Growing up, divorce, children, family, death, band breaks, bus accidents, surgeries, illnesses, recovery - everything is in this album," says Corso. "It's literally the product of all the damn shit, good and bad, we've been through." All of this was channeled into the band's most confident and assured album to date ("The most beautiful flowers grow from shit," Mitchell jokes). After the false start, as soon as they were ready again, they seamlessly continued - and were suddenly full of energy and inspiration again. Older, wiser, and no longer aiming to please the music industry, they were finally able to be 100% themselves on this album. They kept the four songs recorded earlier ("The Wrong Things," "Storms Over," "What Am I Doing?" and the Wham! cover), and produced the remaining seven tracks themselves in drummer Cosgrove's home studio. "Not having to go to L.A. was great," says Mitchell. "Sure, it's fun to drop everything and record an album somewhere else - we've done that often enough. But just working at home in a familiar environment with people you feel comfortable with meant an incredible amount to us." This sense of security can be heard in the music.