American Power Trio PRONG has announced the continuation of their ZERO DAYS TOUR with a series of West Coast dates alongside POWERFLO. After a solid year of touring with the likes of Testament, Obituary, Sepultura, and Exodus, as well as filling key slots on the European Summer Festival Circuit, the band now brings it back home to the states, including a highly coveted, co-headlining run with HELMET.
Pioneers of the alternative metal genre, PRONG have continued to re-invent themselves by challenging the status quo every step they take, as seen on their 2017 release, Zero Days.
Distilling hip-hop, heavy metal, punk, and rock into a potent sonic strain, POWERFLO lives up to its name. The vision of GRAMMY Award-nominated Cypress Hill spitter Sen Dog, downset. guitarist Rogelio “Ray” Lozano, Biohazard vocalist and guitarist Billy Graziadei and ex-Fear Factory bassist Cristian Olde Wolbers, the band draws on thie powerhouse pedigree to collectively smash boundaries with their 2017 self-titled debut.
“Prong is absolutely ecstatic about this upcoming, quick West Coast run with POWERFLO. We are very happy to announce this run of shows with these guys. It really makes a lot of sense: two hard hitting bands whose members have a great history together! It seems to me that the shows are going to be high energy and intense!” – Tommy Victor
PRONG with POWERFLO & Special Guests:
03/29 @ Club Red – Phoenix, AZ
03/30 @ Slidebar – Fullerton, CA
03/31 @ Slims – San Francisco, CA
04/02 @ The Ritz – San Jose, CA
04/03 @ Studio Seven – Seattle, WA
04/04 @ Hawthorne Theater – Portland, OR
04/07 @ Backstage Bar – Las Vegas, NV
04/08 @ Brick By Brick – San Diego, CA
Click HERE for Additional Tour Dates as They’re Announced!
“From the start, it’s clear why Prong have made such an impression on the music scene. They have a sound bigger than the sum of the three people on stage, and they know how to use it. It’s like someone has weaponised metal, and they’re using the audience for aural target practice. It’s impressive, and it’s also really, really fucking good” – Outline Online UK
By the time PRONG had signed to Epic Records in 1989, the New York City post-metal triumvirate had already accomplished a lot. The band, formed by guitarist and vocalist Tommy Victor, sound-man at the legendary club CBGB’salong with the club’s doorman Mike Kirkland and ex-Swans drummer Ted Parsons had already released two independent records: the Primitive OriginsEP (1987) and Force Fed (1988).
A show at the old Ritz in New York with New York hardcore legends Cro-Magsand German thrashers Destruction was what sealed a deal with Epic Records. “Signing with a major label was very much a matter of survival,” Victor explained to Britain’s Kerrang! magazine in 1990. “We aren’t high school kids living with our parents.” Survive and thrive was more like it for PRONG. 1990’s Beg To Differ became an instant genre classic. Songs like the epic title track or the tightly disciplined and sonically dynamic Lost and Found further carved out the band’s innovative deconstruction of metal’s excesses.
“We never saw ourselves as just a metal band,” stated Victor. “Our riffs, lyrics and ideas were minimal but conveyed everything we felt and everything we saw going on around us living in New York City in the 80’s. A lot of what I had to say was pretty reactionary. Disneyland hadn’t moved in yet.”
Over the course of their next three major label releases: Prove You Wrong, (1991) Cleansing (1994) and Rude Awakening (1996), PRONG charted an innovative course. It was actually the Whose Fist Is This Anyway?-EP that ushered in PRONG’s best-known era. The EP was comprised of five remixes from the Prove You Wrong album: introducing a heavier groove and experiments in electronics that gave rise to PRONG’s best known and best selling work:Cleansing.
“We saw where we felt things in metal and hardcore could go and we rolled the dice a bit,” says Tommy of the band’s watershed release. With keyboardist John Bechdel and former Killing Joke bassist Paul Raven, Cleansingcemented PRONG’s position as a mainstream metal mainstay. The album’s single “Snap Your Fingers Snap Your Neck” has been up there in the top 100 riffs ever in Kerrang! After years of toiling on the fringes – propelled by touring with the likes of White Zombie and Pantera – PRONG had arrived.
Rude Awakening was a natural follow-up. Informed by classic post-punk influences like Killing Joke and like-minded Brits Head of David, it showcased PRONG’s continued move into more industrial territory. From the jarring lead song “Controller” to the sweeping chords of the title track, it was PRONG’s most mature and fulfilled work to date. It was also to be PRONG’s last for Epic. The band and label parted ways just weeks after the album’s release. The history of PRONG has cast a long shadow – bands like Korn, Slipknot, and Nine Inch Nails openly acknowledge their influence.
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