Heavy Metal Nation

Buckcherry

All Night Long -- the fifth album from Buckcherry -- is the vital sound of rock and roll endurance at its very best. It's not just rock, it's rock and roll. More than a decade after first establishing its good name with the popular eponymous 1999 debut effort, Buckcherry has created the band's most eclectic and impressive effort yet. All Night Long is a thoroughly rocking song cycle in the grand tradition of classic albums by the group's forefathers and now friends Aerosmith, AC/DC and Kiss.

"We set out to make a great rock record from beginning to end," says lead vocalist Josh Todd. "That's always been our quest. When I listen back to All Night Long, I think that this is definitely one of our strongest efforts to date and has a really definitive overall vibe. Now I can't wait to sing these songs live for people and let everyone hear the results for themselves."

All Night Long finds the band returning to its roots with original independent label Eleven Seven Music, thus giving Buckcherry the freedom over the creative process that the band has always desired. As Buckcherry cofounder and guitarist Keith Nelson explains, Buckcherry is by design a real rock band that's built to last. "I think we endure and evolve because we genuinely do this for the love of the music," says Nelson. "All the by-products of loving the music -- being rock stars, having nice cars and lots of toys -- are pretty cool too, but that's not the motivating factor for us. The motivating factor for Buckcherry is that we all truly love being in a rock and roll band -- specifically, in this rock and roll band -- and that's the passion that drives everything else that we do."

Today, Buckcherry -- Todd, Nelson, guitarist Stevie D., bassist Jimmy Ashhurst and drummer Xavier Muriel -- is clearly a band fired up and ready to bring All Night Long alive on a stage near you. "Buckcherry is not a party without the five of us," explains Keith Nelson. "Though the majority of what you hear starts off with Josh and I, the whole thing only takes on a life of its own when the five of us get together and get rolling. Each one of the guys in the band now is vital to our sound. Stevie is incredibly great to play guitar with, and with the rhythm section, Xavier is the rock and Jimmy is the roll. That's just the way it is."

Throughout their already illustrious history, Buckcherry has never been a group to chase trends or fashions. "There's always a void open for a rock band like us to fill," says Josh Todd. "I don't think anyone else does quite what we do. Hey, it's not that we're re-inventing the wheel, but we've been doing this for over a decade now and part of what makes it work is our chemistry as a band. We don't sound like anyone else. We sound like Buckcherry. We also don't put a lot of bells and whistles and samples in our music, and so what you see is what you get."

Still, it's been an intense journey for Buckcherry to get to this point and kick off their second decade as a recording and touring rock band. The group first formed as Sparrow back in the mid-Nineties in Southern California, eventually choosing a new name inspired by an early transvestite fan and a great Chuck Berry quote. They hit hard right out of the box with their first album (1999's Buckcherry) that featured such notable rock hits as "Lit Up," "For The Movies" and "Check Your Head." 2001's Time Bomb would prove less successful, and soon early original band members left Buckcherry. Josh Todd and Keith Nelson soldiered on for a time, but in 2002, Todd decided to leave the band, suggesting that Buckcherry was done.

Then in 2005, Todd and Nelson decided to revive Buckcherry with a new lineup and together staged a truly remarkable second coming. Released in April, 2006, the band's acclaimed, platinum album 15 contained its biggest rock hit yet in "Crazy Bitch," as well as Buckcherry's first ever Top 10 hit "Sorry." 15 went on to spend an impressive 98 weeks on the Billboard's Top 200. The band's 2008 follow-up Black Butterfly debuted at #8 on Billboard and became a #1 rock album.

All Night Long was produced by Keith Nelson with Marti Frederiksen, who's served as a valued collaborator for Buckcherry since 15. "Marti is a great outside party to have involved," says Nelson. "I try to take off my band member hat and put on the producer hat, and it helps to have Marti there to bounce things off of. He's really invaluable, like a sixth member."

As Nelson explains, recording All Night Long was about Buckcherry showing up at his home studio and working, literally, all night long "without anybody looking at the clock. The process was long by our standards -- three months, but it was a totally different approach. The longer we do this, the more we're inclined to keep re-writing and re-examining what works in a song. But I'm a lifelong believer in the art form of making records. That's a part of my old school can't-let-it-die mentality, and we're going to keep fucking making records."

Expect the solid diversity for which Buckcherry has come to be known on All Night Long - from the classic arena-sized rock and roll party of the album's title track to the straight ahead rock of "Our World," which was rewritten to include lyrics specific to the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, to help draw attention to the cause.