Atlanta, GA · hard rock · heavy metal

Fozzy

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Chris Jericho's rock band, long past the novelty stage and into a genuinely solid hard-rock catalogue — wrestling charisma applied to riffs.

Fozzy started out under the name Fozzy Osbourne, a cover band assembled in Atlanta by guitarist Rich Ward and drummer Frank Fontsere from whatever musicians were available at the time. Chris Jericho met Ward in San Antonio after a wrestling show in 1999 and sat in on early sessions before rejoining full-time in 2000 as frontman, performing under the persona Moongoose McQueen and refusing, in interviews, to admit he and Jericho were the same person.

The band shortened its name to Fozzy and built a joke backstory: they claimed to have signed with a Japanese label decades earlier, been stranded when the company folded, and had their demos stolen and re-recorded by other acts. Their first two albums, Fozzy (2000) and Happenstance (2002), leaned on covers of bands like Dio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Scorpions, and both charted on the Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts.

Fozzy dropped the backstory and the McQueen persona in the mockumentary Unleashed, Uncensored, Unknown, and turned to original material with 2005's All That Remains, which featured guest appearances from Zakk Wylde, Mark Tremonti, Myles Kennedy and Marty Friedman and sold over 100,000 copies. Its single "Enemy" became the theme for WWE No Way Out and later turned up in a promotional video for TNA Bound for Glory.

Since then the band has concentrated on straightforward hard rock and heavy metal, with Ward writing much of the music and Jericho bringing the stage presence he built in wrestling. Jericho has summed up the sound as what you'd get "if Metallica and Journey had a bastard child." The current lineup adds guitarist Billy Grey, bassist P. J. Farley and drummer Grant Brooks alongside Jericho and Ward.

Fozzy has released eight studio albums and one live album, touring regularly behind a catalogue that grew from tongue-in-cheek covers into a steady body of original hard rock.

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hard rockheavy metal