hard rock

Buckcherry

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Los Angeles hard rock built on Josh Todd's rasp and unreconstructed sleaze-rock riffing — a late-nineties holdout still trading in the same swagger.

Buckcherry took shape in Los Angeles in 1995 around singer Josh Todd, who had grown up in Anaheim Hills fronting the glam band Slamhound, and guitarist Keith Nelson, whom he met through a shared tattoo artist. The pair first performed under the name Sparrow before a cease-and-desist from another label forced a change, settling on Buckcherry, a name they said came from a drag queen acquaintance rather than a nod to Chuck Berry.

Buckcherry arrived with a stripped-back hard rock sound rooted in seventies riffing and Sunset Strip attitude at a time when both were out of fashion. Todd's raspy delivery and the band's unapologetically sleazy subject matter defined the early records.

Their self-titled debut, produced by Terry Date, went gold, the first release to do so for DreamWorks Records, and yielded the single "Lit Up." A second album, Time Bomb, followed in 2001 but sold less well as lineup tensions grew, and the band split in 2002.

Todd and Nelson reformed Buckcherry in 2005 with a new lineup, releasing 15 the following year. It contained "Crazy Bitch," the band's best-known single despite limited radio support, and "Sorry," their first top-ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

Todd has remained the band's only constant through further personnel changes, and Buckcherry has kept recording in much the same style, releasing albums including Black Butterfly, Confessions, Warpaint and Vol. 10 in the years since.

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hard rock