Videodrone

Ty Elam, who fronted Videodrone, spent daytime shifts bagging groceries and nighttime hours jamming inside the living rooms of friends’ parents. Bakersfield, California—an oil town evoking the atmosphere of David Lynch films—provided scant outlets beyond country-western clubs, gay bars, and high schools, so Elam routinely assembled carloads of companions for trips into Los Angeles. In 1990 the band operated under the name Cradle of Thorns, shaping a synthetic aggro-electric style shaped equally by sub-B horror-movie soundtracks and the technoshriek arrangements delivered by their Central Valley associates in Korn. A deal with Korn’s own imprint arrived as a fortunate shortcut; yet years earlier, in 1990, Cradle of Thorns had already signed with the respected indie Triple-X, home to Social Distortion, Jane’s Addiction, and others. Active on the lively Huntington Beach club circuit, the band issued a handful of low-budget, self-distributed albums on Triple-X—Remember It Day, Feed Us, and Download This—across four years. At bassist Mavis’s urging, after he expressed interest in Korn’s Elementree Reprise subsidiary, bassist Fieldy Arvizu agreed to produce a new Cradle of Thorns record in 1998. While Korn served as A&R for Elementree, the sole required adjustment was a name change: the group became Videodrone, drawn from David Cronenberg’s film Videodrome, to mark their fresh affiliation and a sound they envisioned as futuristic yet firmly rooted in the 1980s. The resulting, well-received Videodrone album featured guest vocals from Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst and Korn’s Jonathan Davis and appeared shortly after sold-out shows with Korn and Rob Zombie.