Eve To Adam Singer: `It’s Okay To Rock Again!’

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MILWAUKEE (TNA) – Back in 1992, Nirvana started a rock revolution that plunged a knife in the beast that was big, loud metal rock.

Now, 15 years later, that behemoth is coming back to life and that’s music to the ears of Taki Sassaris, lead singer of Eve To Adam, a rock group from Queens, New York, that is hoping to revive metal back to the healthy state it was in during the late 1980s when Guns ‘N’ Roses was at the top.

"Axl Rose showed me the impact a person could have by communicating a message through song," Sassaris said.

Although the Nirvana revolution introduced a lot of great bands to the world, Sassaris feels that those grunge bands gave the impression of feeling guilty if they did anything that smacked of showmanship.

"What I like about Guns ‘N’ Roses is that they didn’t apologize for wanting to be the biggest band in the world. They just went out and kicked ass," Sassaris said. "Rock is missing that these days."

But Sassaris and his fellow Eve To Adam members are hoping to lead a revolution back to the days when rock groups wanted to be popular, and have made their first step towards grabbing the rock crown with their major label debut, "Queens To Eden."

"We want to make it okay to rock again – and not have it be a punch line," Sassaris said.

Eve To Adam isn’t alone in its quest to rock the world. He says other rising bands like Buckcherry, The Exies and even Daughtry, the band led by former "American Idol" finalist Chris Daughtry all have the potential to lay claim to the title of Rock God In The Making.

Interestingly, Sassaris recently had help towards his path of rock domination from Daughtry himself when Eve To Adam opened for Daughtry on a recent tour.

It wasn’t exactly easy.

Although Daughtry pushed himself as a rocker on "Idol," the fans that went to see him in concert weren’t anything close to the folks who usually hang out in rock clubs – and that made it hard for Sassaris and the band to strike a chord with the audience.

"There were a lot of people who weren’t the stereotypical rock crowd at all," Sassaris said. "So being the bad boys wasn’t hard."

"[Daughtry’s audience] hated us for the first 15 shows. There were postings on his message boards demanding we be kicked off the bill. So, we had to be the diplomats for the real rock vibe and be the ones on the show who provided a little bit of dirt."

According to Sassaris, after the initial hating, the Daughtry fan base "slowly became infected by the Eve To Adam virus," so by the time the tour went to Asheville, Kentucky, the audiences were more into these Eve To Adam upstarts than the headlining act.

Sassaris credits his willingness to stick it out despite the tough beginning to his biggest non-musical hero: Michael Jordan.

"When I was an adolescent, I loved watching how he relentlessly attacked his opponents and epically rose to a challenge," Sassaris said. "I try to carry that to the concert stage."

Now that Eve To Adam has passed the Daughtry challenge, the group is now playing with Saliva, a band that attracts an audience more conducive to its hard rock sound. Still, he says every day he is a rock musician presents new challenges.

Luckily, he has help in the form of his trusty "This Is Spinal Tap" DVD, which he admits he uses as a how-to guide.

"In that movie, the band got lost backstage trying to find its way to the stage at a show in Cleveland. That happened to us, not in Cleveland, but in Ohio," Sassaris admitted. "We ended up crawling through the catacombs when we were supposed to be onstage. I asked our guitarist, Gaurav Bali, if this reminded him of Spinal Tap and he laughed.

"To be honest, we considered that moment an initiation of sorts because you don’t struggle through the tiny clubs in New York without wanting to get to the big places, so we were just smiling as it happened."

Although Sassaris has had other embarrassing Spinal Tap moments while with Eve To Adam, he’s okay with that, and has no desire to keep up the rock God façade 24 hours a day.

"You don’t have to be cool all the time," Sassaris said. "You just have to rock."