Grand Fury rages with ‘wild abandon’

One of the band members says the group is a bit old school.

By JOHN BENSON

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

Red. Yellow. Green. Go.

With a name like Grand Fury, you know this rock trio — Sean Ewing (guitar, vocals), Jake Luther (bass, vocals), Ryan Shelar (drums) — is a pedal-to-the-metal type of band.

“That’s a pretty good description,” Ewing said. “When we go up there, we’re definitely not the most style-conscious guys that you’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely all about wild abandon, I guess. We just blast through the songs.”

For the past two years, Niles band Grand Fury has been laying rubber and taking no prisoners around Northeast Ohio with its blistering hard-rock sound and hard-rock presence.

“A lot of people want to put us in the stoner rock genre,” said Ewing, a 1990 Liberty High School graduate. “We’ve been compared to bands like Clutch and Fu Manchu, a lot of the bands that fall into that genre, but at the same time, I think we kind of come across as old school ’70s in a way.

“Like some of the fuzzier rock, Black Sabbath all the way through Van Halen. That kind of guitar-oriented rock is where we’re coming from.”

Up next for Grand Fury is its Friday show at Cedars, which Ewing said will be the threesome’s last for a while as the band concentrates on its full-length debut effort. The outfit hopes the album will open doors for opportunities to perform at music festivals across the nation.

Songs Ewing said the group is excited about include the science fiction-themed “Last Day” and oddball-named “Water Pig.” While the upcoming album doesn’t currently have a title, the singer hinted how the trio will go about titling the effort, and in the process defines what Grand Fury is all about.

“I think the plan is we’re all going to take three words, throw them all in a hat and pick them out in some order that makes no sense at all and that will be the title,” Ewing said. “A lot of those things, people attach a whole lot of meaning to the name of an album, and to be honest with you, it really doesn’t matter as long as it’s catchy.

“Sometimes you can come up with cool things just by doing things like that. We try not to take things like that too seriously. The idea is to go out there, have fun and hopefully get some people interested and moving around a little bit. We try to do it up old school rock style, just turn it up and go.”