Chastain (band)

Chastain is a heavy metal project formed in 1984 by guitarist David T. Chastain and signed by Shrapnel Records.

The band was put together in 1984 by Mike Varney, president of Shrapnel for a David T. Chastain solo album. Varney had noticed the shred guitar ability of Chastain, member of the Cincinnati-based band CJSS and, at the same time, he wanted to create an output for the talent of young singer Leather Leone, formerly with the San Francisco band Rude Girl. The first band line-up included Leone, Chastain, CJSS bassist Mike Skimmerhorn and drummer Fred Coury, who would later play in Cinderella. In 1986, Chastain readily declared that "I could never work with these people on a full-time basis because they live all over the country (...). We just get together once a year, record an album and then go off and do our own things". In the case of Chastain, he wrote music for CJSS and his solo albums, as well as producing other artists and managing his own record label.

Their debut album Mystery of Illusion was released worldwide in 1985, followed by Ruler of the Wasteland (1986), both through Shrapnel, and The 7th of Never (1987) through David Chastain's own label Leviathan Records. Drummer Ken Mary (Fifth Angel, TKO) replaced Coury from 1986 to 1988. The fourth album The Voice of the Cult was released in 1988. On 1990s For Those Who Dare, new virtuoso bass player David Harbour replaced Skimmerhorn and drummer John Luke Hebert replaced Mary, who went to play for Alice Cooper. Having put on hiatus CJSS to favour the more commercially successful Chastain, the band became also David T. Chastain main touring occupation, with a succession of world tours until 1991.

+/- (band)

+/-, or Plus/Minus, is an American indietronic band formed in 2001. The band makes use of both electronic and traditional instruments, and has sought to use electronics to recreate traditional indie rock song forms and instrumental structures. The group has released two albums on each of the American indie labels Teenbeat Records and Absolutely Kosher, and their track "All I do" was prominently featured in the soundtrack for the major film Wicker Park. The group has developed a devoted following in Japan and Taiwan, and has toured there frequently. Although many artists append bonus tracks onto the end of Japanese album releases to discourage purchasers from buying cheaper US import versions, the overseas versions of +/- albums are usually quite different from the US versions - tracklists can be rearranged, artwork with noticeable changes is used, and tracks from the US version can be replaced as well as augmented by bonus tracks.