East Bay hard rock trio Charger, consisting of bassist Matt Freeman, guitarist Andrew McGee, and drummer Jason Willer, make no attempts to hide their love of Motörhead. It’s reflected in their music, their song titles, and even their artwork.
“Motörhead was just one of those bands that you’d be at the punk party, and it always you came on—it was like, ‘Fuck yeah!’ You know what I mean?” Freeman explains.
Freeman usually plays the part of the straight-faced muscle in as the bassist for his main gig in Rancid. His playing is dirty, frenetic, and precise (go listen to “Maxwell Murder” again if you need a reminder.) This might be a crude metaphor, but if Rancid frontmen Tim Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen were fists, Freeman formed the muscle that propelled them into your face.
He doesn’t step up to the mic as often as his bandmates in Rancid, but when he does, his gravelly baritone equally conveys raw attitude as it does melody. Suffice to say: if you’re looking for someone to carry the torch for the late Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone more clear-cut than Matt Freeman.
“Rancid was coming up on this break. We had a pretty big year in 2017; we just finished that first Boston-to-Berkeley thing, and (Willer) was like ‘We should do something!’” Freeman recounts the band’s inception with drummer Jason Willer.
“And I’m like ‘What do you want to do?’ Because I don’t want to play street punk. I’ve already played punk and ska. I don’t need to do that. He goes, ‘What do you like?’ And I said, ‘I like Motörhead and Sabbath. You want to play something like that? That would be fucking fun.’ And it was it just started out that way.”
And thus, Charger were formed.
Let’s not waste anyone’s time talking about why Motörhead rules. (Lemmy is like Jesus—he either lives in your heart or he doesn’t.) But part of what made Motörhead so enduring is how they formed a unified field theory for classic rock and punk. They were Zeppelin, and they were GBH—combined in a way that felt dangerous and elemental. For Freeman, this was an exciting stepping-off point when it came to writing the band’s debut LP, Warhorse.
“I was born in ‘66, so I was 14 at the end of ‘70s,” Freeman reflects. “When you’re young— especially back then before you had the internet, and you can get anything right away—you listen to what was on. What your parents were playing on the radio stations. And I think I absorbed a lot of that stuff, a lot of that ‘70s hard rock, ‘80s hard rock, and metal.”
Dropping March 18 via Pirate Press Records, Warhorse encompasses everything from old-school punk, thrash, and doom metal—all the stuff the band grew up on. Album opener “Devastator” is elegant in its simplicity, a wrecking ball of drums, a chorus centered around a single word, and a dive-bombing guitar solo is just long enough to grab another beer.
“(Freema)] just gets to do the whole deal thing man; he just gets to go for it,” guitarist Andrew McGee says. “He gets to go for the whole Lemmy thing, the Dio thing—all the stuff he grew up on—and he just lets it rip.”
The band incorporates some prog elements like an extended organ solo at the beginning and during the bridge of “Dig Your Own Grave,” while “Summon the Demon”—featuring guest vocalist Jake Nunn from Hellfire—and is pure ‘80s thrash metal.
“That song right there shows you how much fun we were having,” McGee says. “I mean, that song is just hilarious. We wrote that song probably a year and a half before, then we asked Jake to sing on it and he was down. He came in and when he sang that part, we were all jumping up and down in the studio. It was just fucking awesome.”
McGee entered the band when Freeman mentioned he was looking for someone to record guitar on their demos. The two had met years ago when McGee began working at a bar in the East Bay that Freeman liked to hang out for happy hour or A’s games.
“This sounds really pretentious, but I don’t think he knew who I was,” laughs Freeman.
“I grew up on the East Coast,” McGee elaborates. “When Operation Ivy was around, I’d heard of them, but I didn’t really care. I wasn’t into ska! And when Rancid was around, I heard them on the radio, but I was in a whole other world. I liked their songs, but Matt was just my friend Matt. The fact that he was in Rancid was cool, but we just used to drink beer and talk about baseball.”
McGee grew up playing in metal and punk bands in Philadelphia before relocating to Berkeley where he now owns a Thai restaurant with his wife. He offered to help Freeman track some guitar parts with the intention of helping his friend find an actual guitarist.
“Matt (Freeman) was telling me he was looking for a Motörhead, Fast Eddie kind of thing. And I was like, I can do that, man. I’ll go up next time I’m up there, and I’ll just play those licks, no problem. He was looking for other guitar players he wanted—and understandable, I’m not anybody! (laughs) But I was just like, ‘I can play that shit. I’ll play it on your demos so that you can send it around to your friends and find a guitar player.’”
McGee thought he was just stepping in to help demo out some guitar tracks, but Freeman was happy with how three members were sounding together.
“Matt had an endless list of amazing guitar players that he could choose from, so the fact that I’m playing with him just so happened that there was a connection,” McGee recounts. “When I went into that room, and Matt was like, ‘I don’t give a shit. There’s a connection here. This is what it is.’”
“Honestly, the first couple of weeks I really was a little nervous that Lars would beat my ass if I wasn’t good enough,” McGee jokes. “Because I knew Lars too, just from hanging out with Matt—and Lars and I are cool! But again, Lars also would not hesitate to be like ‘Dude, get the fuck out.’”
“I’m really lucky to be playing with someone like Jason and Drew,” Freeman reflects. “I’m not trying to you overthink it; I’m just having fun with it -writing songs and just having a good time.”
Watch the video for “Rolling Through The Night” here:
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Photo courtesy of Charger and Alan Snodgrass
