32 leaves given a home for tough-to-define sound

By CHRIS HANSEN ORF
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Not many high school bands ever graduate from the garage. Fewer still sign with a record label.

Valley rockers 32 Leaves, featuring four members (out of five) who met as freshmen in high school, can boast that a label was created just for them.

“We're like the guinea pig,” laughs singer Greg Norris of the band's deal with Double Blind Records, whose parent company, System Recordings, specializes in electronica music. “They don't put out rock records on System, but they liked what we were doing so much that they created the label around us. ”

Electronica might be the only rock-based genre 32 Leaves hasn't been lumped into. The band is featured on both heavy-metal and punk Web sites.

“That's actually been a problem for us,” says Norris of the band's heavy, melodic sound. “There are a lot of bands we want to (tour) with right now that we've fallen into the cracks with because we don't scream every five seconds. I mean, we scream, but it's a tasteful screaming.”

“It makes it hard (to find bands to play with) because there are little pockets of scenes, but we really don't belong in any of them,” adds guitarist Mike Lopez. “But that's a good thing too — when those scenes fall apart, we'll still be doing our thing.”

PARTY ANIMALS
The band has been hard to pin down since their inception, when Norris, guitarists Lopez and Mike Chavez and drummer Barrett Gardner bonded over Nirvana and Alice in Chains as freshmen at Glendale's Ironwood High School.
“The three of us met at this five-day party at my house when my parents were out of town,” says Norris. “At the end of the whole thing, when everybody had eaten all of the food out of my house, we were the only ones left, and we just started jamming.''
Bassist Aron Orosz joined the band in 2001. In addition to bringing a stable bass presence, he had the connections that led to the band's record deal.
“I had a friend who went to the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences (in Tempe),” Orosz explains. “He was doing an internship at System Records in New York and I sent him our EP (“Fiction”) and he played it for the office and they loved it. Two weeks later they flew out to meet us.”

DEBUT CD RELEASED
Double Blind Records placed 32 Leaves' hard-driving debut album, “Welcome to the Fall,” in stores on Tuesday, and hired noted video director Dale Resteghini, who has made videos by bands such as Mudvayne, Ill Niño and Anthrax, to make the band's clip for the lead single, “Blood on My Hands.”
32 Leaves, armed with a new 29-seat robin's-egg-blue bus that used to shuttle gamblers to a casino in Sacramento, will take off on a tour in October to promote the record.
With any luck, the bus will take 32 Leaves to where the big money is.

32 Leaves CD release party
When: 9 p.m. Friday
Where: Joe's Grotto, 13825 N. 32nd St., Phoenix
How much: $8
Info: or www.32leaves.com