It’s time to meet your face-melter: Rust Belt metal consortium Changing Tymz is here to rock your socks off. With a line-up of seasoned veterans hailing from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, this group puts the best of metal riffs, runs, and rhymes to service, ailing the woes of our changing and difficult times. While tackling issues like addiction, spirituality, and relationships through a mature lens, no member of the band holds back their respective contribution. Drummer Tony Rossi hammers out rhythms with passion and precision. Coupled with the imaginative bass runs of Bryan McQuade, they lay a foundation for dual guitarists Timmy Wysong and Brian Weber to shred the intervals between lead singer JoAnn Wolfe’s vocal firework displays. And the result isn’t some cacophony but an orchestrated message—often of hope and freedom. After releasing 2020’s self-titled album Changing Tymz, the group’s been hard at work producing an upcoming 11-track album to be released later this year. Along with a string of singles and music videos, the band has primed their fans for an epic series of live shows.
Changing Tymz’s new single, “Shark Attack,” is a promising example of what we can expect from their upcoming album. The song is a touching and masterful tribute to drummer Tony Rossi’s late brother and former bandmate, Peter Rossi. They wrote the towering first riff together before Peter passed from a fentanyl overdose in 2017, and the song draws a parallel between the suddenness of his passing and a shark attack. The maze-like series of guitar runs resemble the tangled paths of grief, while Wolfe’s melodies and lyrics speak to the psychological pains of addicts and those close to them.
The music video for “Shark Attack,” directed by Rossi and friend Tom Fox Davies, explores the damaging consequences of drugs. In the film, a group of martial artists becomes confronted by the real violence that drugs bring to their community. While we’d expect them to be prepared to fight, it takes more than fists of fury to overcome addiction and its miscreants. They suffer losses but ultimately find peace and recovery in connection. As the video fades out, the band stands almost at salute behind Peter Rossi’s guitar, a remembrance and memorial to a life lived in music.
