BRUTE FORCZ - Big, Thick, And In Your Face

November 27, 2012, 11 years ago

By Kelley Simms

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If songs about kicking ass and getting laid gets you fired up, then BRUTE FORCZ is for you.

The L.A. band is led by ex-professional tag team wrestlers and fraternal twins Jammer (bass/vocals) and Slammer (drums) Steel. The brothers might be familiar with wrestling fans when they grappled with prominent wrestlers such as the Steiner Brothers, Jake the Snake Roberts and Abdullah the Butcher in the ’90s in the now-defunct WCW.

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, these good ol’ boys are also actors who have appeared in various commercials and most recently, a cameo in former Saturday Night Live actor Adam Sandler’s major motion picture, Jack and Jill.

Being physical, heavily-built guys, the band’s appearance and name reflects its music. Their self-proclaimed musical motto is “big, thick and in your face.” The brothers began playing in a cover band shortly after high school, and around the same time, they took an interest in pro wrestling. Within this time period is when they first heard Motörhead, which formed the basis of Brute Forcz’s sound and style.

“I started playing bass and my brother started playing drums and we could never find a singer who could fit with our sound,” Jammer gruffly states. “Then one day I was listening to Motörhead and started thinking that if that guy could sing and put his music around his voice, then I could, too. I listened to Lemmy. I don’t have a good voice, but I had to have something that fit my style. So I write this style of music around my voice and try to do the Lemmy type of thing, and so far it’s worked out for us.”

In 2003, while their band was on hold and as their wrestling careers came to an end, the brothers relocated to L.A. to pursue an acting career.

“We actually got pretty lucky pretty quickly. We did four IBM commercials in 2003. We worked with a really good director who’s known for commercials, named Joe Ditka. He liked us and he put us on these commercials. Then another commercial and then another commercial. So we started out doing really well. My brother did an episode of General Hospital. Nothing really big enough until we actually did that Adam Sandler part.”

The brothers’ briefly ad-libbed parts during the end credits of the Sandler movie was certainly a highlight in their career.

“That movie was really cool to do. They cut out a lot of our stuff, like they did everybody else’s. Adam Sandler was cool as hell; a nice guy, professional and friendly. We had a script at first, but because we are good at ad libbing from wrestling, we didn’t use any of our script at all. We just ad libbed as they asked us questions. We were able to do things as an on-the-spot improv thing.”

Since performing in the Sandler movie, the brothers have put their acting and wrestling careers on hold while they concentrate on their musical careers.

“We’re pretty much done with wrestling unless somebody gave us big money for that. We’re concentrating solely on the band. We always have an agent and manager for acting, so if something came up, if it was good enough for us, we couldn’t refuse that because it’s good money and it could only be good publicity for our band. Our next goal for us is to try and get on a tour. If we have to do it ourselves, we’ll do whatever we need to do for the next step for us. We’ve done everything we could to do except to tour to get our music out there to see if people like it.”

The band created a decent buzz with their 2011 four-song EP, which was produced by legendary guitarist and Grammy Award-winning Bob Kulick, older brother of former KISS lead guitarist Bruce. There’s a somewhat humorous slant about how they eventually met Kulick and secured him as their producer. Jammer picks up the story.

“My brother and I were working out in the gym and we kept noticing this one guy who kept walking by us and he looked really familiar,” Jammer said. “After the fourth or fifth time he walked by, we realized it was Bruce Kulick of KISS. We’re Kiss fans, so we just wanted to go meet the guy and introduce ourselves. So we go over toward him and he was kind of cornered in this area and the look on his face was like, ‘Who are these big gorillas coming over to pin me in this corner?’ (laughs). We looked like thugs or Tony Soprano with long hair coming at him! (laughs). So, we told him that we were having a hard time finding someone to produce us and he said we should talk to his brother. We e-mailed Bob and he called us back and set up a meeting and we went over to his house. We first talked about wrestling for an hour and a half, then we got down to business about him producing us.”

The band, highlighted by the blistering guitar leads and crunchy riffs of British-born guitarist Will Wallner, is about to self-release its debut full-length album, Out For Blood. As a fairly new band in the metal game, the brothers just want to earn enough scratch off its music to be successful enough to quit their day jobs.

“I would just like to make a good enough living off of our music to not have to wake up at 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning,” Jammer concludes. “We just want to get our music out there. I feel our music is different nowadays because there’s not much traditional heavy metal out there. The older bands are getting older, unfortunately, and there will be a time here soon that those guys won’t be around anymore, which is going to be sad. So I feel that if we can just get our music out there to a wider range of people, that we will be successful enough to make a dent in the metal world.”



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