Battery (band)
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Battery is a band partially responsible for the rebirth of Washington DC hardcore.[citation needed] From 1990 to 1998, Battery released a 7", a split 7" with Ignite, two MCDs and three full-lengths on Lost & Found, Conversion, and Revelation Records.
Guitar player and main man was Ken Olden, who also played in Damnation Ad and Better Than A Thousand. He was also playing bass for Youth Of Today on the 2003 European reunion tour.
Singer Brian McTernan owns and operates Salad Days recording studio.
Brian McTernan also played guitar in the D.C. emo hardcore band Ashes. Battery started as a project band in 1990, and their EP "We Won't Fall" was released on the European hardcore label Lost and Found. Brian McTernan was on vocals, Ken Olden on guitars, Toshi Yano on bass and Zac Eller on drums. The band, as it says in the liner notes on the EP, then turned into Worlds Collide, which was more metallic and slower with a "new school" hardcore sound. Brian McTernan was replaced by Matt Burger as vocalist in this new band.
The Battery EP achieved phenomenal success in Europe, especially in Germany, whereas back in the States the band was only well known in the DC area. This led to a reformation of Battery, or at least original singer Brian teamed up with Ken Olden as well as a new bass player, Ben Chused, and a new drummer, Alec Rosenberg. At some point they embarked on an extensive European Tour. They released their first full length album, "Only the Diehard Remain", independently on "Tidal" in the US and on Lost and Found in Europe. This album featured the cover of 7 Seconds "We're Gonna Fight". On this album Ken Olden performed all drum tracks as well as the guitar tracks.
They then released another EP "Let the Past Go", which most likely had Ken Olden performing the drum tracks again. This was followed by "Until the End", their second full length which was released on "Conversion" records in the US and again on Lost and Found in Europe. On this record they covered another 7 Seconds song, "Young Till I Die". By this stage they had a new drummer, Jason Hamacher, who also played in the D.C. band Frodus, however Ken Olden still performed all the drum tracks on this album. This album saw the refinement of the bands old school revival style as its past releases tended to be a bit more thrashier and metallic. The bassist Ben Chused then left the band and moved to Boston to play drums in another Old School revival band Ten Yard Fight. He was replaced with Graham Land who had played 2nd guitar in the early stages of World Collide and who also started Better Than A Thousand with Ken Olden and Ray Cappo, who was the singer for Youth of Today.
Their third and final full length release "Whatever It Takes" was released on the major hardcore label Revelation Records, which in its infancy had put out records of such early hardcore bands as Youth of Today and Gorilla Biscuits. The drums on this album were, for the first time since the "We Won't Fall" EP, played by someone other than Ken Olden, their live drummer Jason Hamacher. This album was by far the softest of their releases and Brian McTernan said in an interview that the next record would be "more aggressive sounding".
Unfortunately another release would never materialise as the band broke up due to differences between Brian McTernan and Ken Olden. However Ken Olden did release a compilation CD of Battery's best songs from their past records on a Spanish hardcore label.
