Future Tense

Chronic Future, long absent from the local scene, reemerges with a major-label deal

Comments (0) By Brendan Joel Kelley Thursday, Aug 14 2003

Once Beyond was officially bankrupt, the band recruited producer Sean Beaven to oversee the new record. Beaven has produced Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and Moth, and was the original producer for the enigmatic and yet-to-be-heard Guns n' Roses comeback record Chinese Democracy(like a village of others, Axl drove him nuts).

"We fell in love with his sound," Collins says. "He has the bigness, the sonic glory, but at the same time it feels like a real band playing it, not like a Linkin Park record where everything is done on a computer. We're trying to make a real record with that combination but that doesn't sound like a machine made it."

The work is in the present: Chronic Future is hard at work in L.A. on a new album.

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After practicing under Beaven's supervision for two weeks in L.A., the band entered the recording studio in late July. "He knows the songs in and out probably as well as we do," Breen says of Beaven's oversight. "We really jelled with him a lot. We're averaging two songs a day, basic tracking. We have the luxury of being able to have plenty of time getting great sounds. It's rare to have that luxury in a recording situation." The band is booked in the studio for a month, enough time to record its 11-song album and a couple of extra tracks for international release and soundtracks.

The onetime "Scottsdale brats," to quote their first hit, seem to have successfully rebranded themselves to a degree that's unimaginable in the current industry climate, though the true test is yet to come, when A Chronic Futureis released and the dynamic band returns to the stage.