Yet however firmly Cats fixed Local H as hearty keepers of the hard-rock flame, on its new one, Here Comes the Zoo, the band doesn't do anything so much as get embroiled in a game of Six Degrees of Dave Grohl.
Here's how it goes:
1. Singer-guitarist Scott Lucas has often been called a successor to Kurt Cobain's tradition, the one where you balance noise and melody, angst and dark humor. In the post-Nevermind free-for-all that was the record industry in the mid-'90s, Local H became Island Records' shot at alt-rock glory, scoring a minor hit in "Bound for the Floor" (known to radio listeners as "The Copacetic Song"). Ultimately, those hopes were dashed as Island was folded into the monolithic Universal Music Group and Cats got lost in the shuffle--a sad anticlimax with which any Nirvana fan can relate.
2. Queen of the Stone Age's Josh Homme guests on Zoo's "Rock & Roll Professionals," one of several songs on the album that contains a whiff of the Southern Californian stoner rock Homme brought to the mainstream in 2000 with the Queens' stellar Rated R. (Another is the nine-minute meltdown "Baby Wants to Tame Me.") Grohl is a huge fan of and is currently playing drums with the Queens.
3. Lucas also occasionally resembles--purposefully or not--Grohl favorite Andrew W.K., a metal-loving misfit from Michigan whose forthcoming I Get Wet sounds something like if Roy Thomas Baker had fronted the Misfits (whose Jerry Only also guests on Zoo).
4. Roy Thomas Baker fronting the Misfits: What more did you need exactly?
