Sappy Bell - Its music's gotten heavier and more focused in the last decade.

Good things don't happen overnight. Cleveland metalcore quintet Sappy Bell knows that well. The late July release of the band's first full-length CD, The Nightmare Chronicles, is the culmination of a journey of more than a decade for band founder/lead vocalist John Sloboda, who started it in 1995 when he was still in high school. The band's had a stable lineup - Mel Hardy, Chris Hawley, Matt Kollar and Jeff Ready - for nearly five years. But until now it had only released some EPs and two- or three-song demos.

"Basically we did EPs because we knew it was something we could record, get out and work from, go out and play and get feedback, and then do another in a short time as we progressed," Sloboda explains.

He says that with the changes the band has undergone to arrive at its current sound, a fierce blast of extreme metal woven with strands of melody, EPs better allowed the band to keep fans up to date.

"The music has gotten heavier and heavier as time went on," says Sloboda. "It's always been rock 'n' roll-oriented, but when I was in high school it was kind of more an all-over-the-map band. I often described the first EP as kind of like a party rock band, four or five kids banging around trying to have fun, trying to figure out how to play our instruments. Back then I was our drummer and singing. I decided to put drums away and focus on singing, and I went from being singer into being screamer and now I'm incorporating more singing so it's gone full circle. The music has gone from hard rock to hardcore metal. It naturally tuned into what it is; it didn't take a big turn or anything."

The new disc was produced at Strongsville's Spider Studio by Tony Gammalo and mixed by Spider owner Ben Schigel, and distributed by Corporate Punishment Records through Koch Entertainment. Sloboda is hoping new doors will open for the band, and it's ready to work to open them. The band is self-financing a radio promotion campaign in September through New York's Skateboard Marketing. It's planning to do more out-of-town touring in markets where it gets a good response, expanding on the first real tour it did last fall, 11 dates in the Midwest and Southwest with fellow Corporate Punishment act Allele. And it already opened a door for itself with the four dates it scored on the Van's Warped Tour, including the Cleveland stop on its Hot Topic stage. (Sloboda made it a point to meet Warped tour founder Kevin Lyman when he was at the Rock Hall for the opening of the current special exhibit there on the tour. Lyman agreed to give the plucky group a shot.)

"We were the only heavy band on the stage where we were playing but every band on the stage was different and we went over really well," he says. "I think the kids that come out to watch are just into seeing live music, period. It seems like kids wandering by or who were specifically at that stage responded really positively. By late fall we hope to tour more. That's another reason we decided to do a full-length. Having done this for several years we've gotten into kind of a point of now or never. We've done everything we can do ourselves. We're finding over the past 10 years of doing everything you can think of that everything's the luck of just finding a spot you can hook into that takes off. Touring, I think, is our key right now."

CO-CONSPIRATOR

Unknowing (self-released)

coconspiratorband.com

If you mix Incubus, Nickelback and shitty hardcore music, what do you get? I'm sure you have sought this answer far and wide and I have it for you: Co-Conspirator. Coming at you from Akron, the band calls its music "progressive jazz and intense metal." If that doesn't give you a headache ahead of time, I don't know what will. The first track on its recently released EP, Unknowing, begins in a promising fashion with a jazzy bass line and fast-paced drums in the background, but quickly devolves into Chad Kroeger-ish screaming. While the guys in the band (Ken Kimmel, Tom McCain, Morgan Phelps, Ken Nepodal) clearly have a handle on their music theory, they haven't yet grasped the concept of decent music. They have reached their goal of being unique by fusing jazz with metal/hardcore noise, but it's hard to hear throughout most of the songs. - Emily Spine

B.E. MANN

Cool Runnings: UK Tribute Inna Reggae Style

(Independent Records/Mann 2 Mon Music)

B.E. Mann's musical career has spanned 20 years and, with the release of Cool Runnings, has endured 24 full-length albums. In commemoration of this impressive milestone, Mann decided to cover songs from some of the best artists across the pond. Mann's interpretations of the songs aren't really bad so much as they are just not as good as the originals. But because his attempts are substandard, they slaughter previously great songs. The Specials' brass collage opening on "Ghost Town" is recreated with a few ill-sounding notes on a keyboard. And reggae stop-and-start guitar work definitely can't replace Johnny Marr's tender strumming on the Smiths "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want." Most of the other songs are totally mangled, and even the artists who wrote them would struggle to identify the remains. - Tim Webb