Tatarus- The Next Best Rock Band to Come Out of Olympia?

Tatarus played down at the Midnight Sun Friday night April 1^st.   I received a call from their manager (Mark Carras) to come out and see the show, take some pictures and post a blog about the event as he believes this band is the next best rock band to come out of Olympia Washington.

Now I am a skeptic when it comes to bands being formed in high school as I do not believe they have the maturity as other seasoned musicians have.  I mean really, you take a 17 or 18 year old kid, throw some tail at them, ask them to continue to practice and play with more tail chasing them all the while their lady friend sits in the background…you have the making for another Yoko Ono situation!  Speaking of that, I did a little research to find out just how many bands were formed in high school to make a name for them in a greater light and you can count them on one hand!  With that said, they aren’t peanut bands either (and please if you know of other bands, great! But this is what I found). 

Genesis: good band lasted through the 80’s after being formed in 1967. 

Doctor Dolphin was formed at Davidson High in northern Sydney. They moved to Perth for one year to learn the ropes and changed their name to INXS, which unless you were born after the early 1990’s you have heard of them. 

Most everyone knows the band Sweet Children after their name change thanks to one of their teachers making the statement ‘it would be a Green Day in hell before you made anything out of yourselves’.  Thanks Teach!!

In 1976 Larry Mullen posted an ad on his Dublin school’s bulletin board ‘Looking for Musicians’. Mullen who would play drums must have had a magic pin or was very lucky cause the first day of auditions brought in Adam Clayton on bass, Dave (The Edge) Evans and some guy named Paul Hewson which is better known as Bono…the Band...U2

And finally Liverpool’s Quarry Bank High brought us The Quarryman!  That’s right a small band at first and when the changed their name, they became to best, most widely know and all time selling…blah, blah, blah…you guessed it…The Beatles…Ok so where does put Tatarus!

With influences like Pantera, Black Label Society, Lamb of God, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne.  Tatarus is placed in a perfect position to make something of themselves.  It seems that this type of music has been dying off over the past few years but we are beginning to see a comeback and Tatarus is a band that could make it on the scene. 

                                            

With the band only playing together for about a year and even less time on stage together, they do have some obstacles to overcome. The band is managed by Mark Carras who owns Rock my Monkey (www.rockmymonkey.com) which should be a huge help to the band as he has connections just about everywhere.  If the band listens to Marks knowledge and that of other willing to help them, they will be a great band.

                                            

I truly enjoyed the bands show Friday night as they were able to engage the crowd of about 50 people and show them how to rock!  Lead Singer Michael Parent is an in your face type of singer and this pumped the crowd up to the point to busting out an old school MOSH pit, oh how that brings back memories!  With only a few songs written by them, it was good to also know that they didn’t butcher to cover songs they did… As I stated in the beginning, I was skeptical about covering a band one year in the business, playing on stage together for a few months and also being a ‘High School’ band.  However, after April 1^st 2011, I am a fan of Tatarus!  I would suggest you to jump over to their face book page (here) and like them. 

So what is Tatarus?

I am also not one on classic mythology; however, in 400BC Plato wrote that the souls were judged after death and those who received punishment were sent to Tatarus!  This is a place in the underworld even lower the Hades…yeah