Ever since Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker formed Cream in 1966, the term ‘supergroup‘ quickly became lazy shorthand for a band who feature other successful musicians.
Supergroup is a very fragile thing. Rock bands are always about balancing huge egos, but when those egos are oversized from the get-go it can lead to huge problems. That’s why supergroups like Blind Faith often fail to go beyond a single album, and why long-lasting ones like CSNY had drama that never seemed to end.
That said, here are our greatest rock supergroups of all time, and it’s brought to you by casino roo.
The Damned Things
Part of the challenge that comes with supergroups is trying to find just the right musicians that are able to gel together. If you don’t have people with at least some kind of overarching thread, any potential that they may have will go down the drain if there’s isn’t that much chemistry. Even though the Damned Things’ previous acts are miles apart though, everything makes sense when they’re together.
Bringing in members from Every Time I Die, this band definitely have some chops for some heavy stuff, but the ones who really step up to the plate here are the members of Fall Out Boy. Though the pop punk act that we know is typically Pete Wentz’ outfit, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley have some real thunder coming from their instruments, which is a shame that they are normally stifled into standard playing in their own band.
As if to put the icing on the cake though, you have Scott Ian from Anthrax, bringing his batsh*t insane rhythm guitar playing into the mix and giving the band a shot of energy. Though the actual music tends to fall into your standard sleazy rock and roll outfit, this is definitely a change of pace than what we’re used to. Hell, it’s refreshing to at least see all of these guys are able to earn their road stripes across two completely different styles of rock music.
Giraffe Tongue Orchestra
Enter ‘giraffe tongue’ into your Google search bar and you’ll find the search engine will suggest, after colour (black or purple) and length (20 inches), The Dillinger Escape Plan Ben Weinman’s side-project featuring Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds, Alice In Chains vocalist William DuVall, The Mars Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen and Dethklok/Zappa Plays Zappa bassist Pete Griffin.
“I was at the zoo in Sydney, Australia and was checking out the giraffes,” says Brent of their unusual moniker. “They are amazing animals – one just grabbed a bunch of bananas from my hand with its tongue and peeled them with it as well – by the time the bananas got to its mouth, they were ready to be eaten. I saw Ben who was at [Australian festival] Soundwave too and said, ‘Man I think I found the name for our band.’”
Giraffe Tongue Orchestra released their soaring prog-like debut, Broken Lines, through Ben’s Party Smasher label in 2016.
Gone Is Gone
2016 also saw the release of Gone Is Gone’s self-titled EP. Mastodon singer/bassist Troy Sanders teamed up with Queens Of The Stone Age’s Troy van Leeuwen, At The Drive In drummer Tony Hajjar and keyboardist/guitarist Mike Zarin, combining big riffs with trippy interludes.
“It’s a project that can live even when we are working with our other entities as well,” Tony told Rolling Stone. “The goal is to be able to compose remotely, if needed, on film, trailers, or on anything else that comes up.”
Killer Be Killed
Before Gone Is Gone released their debut EP, Mastodon’s Troy found time to work with Killer Be Killed, a supergroup formed by The Dillinger Escape Plan/The Black Queen frontman Greg Puciato and Soulfly’s Max Cavalera, who were both fans of best online casino south Africa. The line-up, who released their self-titled album via Nuclear Blast in 2014, welcomed Converge drummer Ben Koller and ex-Torche guitarist Juan Montoya into the fold a year later.
Audioslave
Late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell and Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk joined forces in 2001 and named their new project Audioslave. After it emerged there was a Liverpool act already using the name, they gave the unsigned band $30,000 to share (the UK band later changed their name to The Most Terrifying Thing).
“[The name] was Chris’ suggestion that sort of came to him in a vision,” remembers Tom. “We’re all on the two-way pagers, and Chris one night said, ‘I got it. It’s Audioslave.’ We were all like, ‘Alright, fantastic.’ It’s the last thing in the world, to paraphrase Elvis Costello, talking about band names is like dancing about architecture – there’s just no point in it because the band name becomes the music and the people.”
