Where Are You?

Wicked Maraya --FOUND!
Mid-tempo power crunch

Let me return to where I began, back to my "Death Of Hard Rock" ramblings from when Maximum Metal originally launched. At that time my main beef was the fact that hard rock had gained so many contenders in the 90s, only to see it all slip away due to flannel shirts, unwashed hair, and spoiled Seattle rich kids. Great bands like Radakka, Rated-X, and Skitzotik just simply faded from existence, at times faster than Jimmy Swaggart's donation proceeds in a seedy back alley. Along with the wash out of talent and creativity came one of my favorite bands, easily marked down on my books as a victim of circumstance. New York's Wicked Maraya is that band, completely erased from the slates and gone from most memories, but not mine.

Some folks in the community will call Wicked Maraya progressive metal. To me they were pretty much a solid hard rock act, really leaning more towards classic heavy metal, but adding in that extra something to make them seem a bit too fancy to be just straight forward heavy metal. To me they could always be looked at in the same light as Savatage's "Edge Of Thorns" and "Handful Of Rain", minus the annoying keyboards. With a strong make-up of groove oriented metallic chops, a rock steady vocalist, and the will power and muscle to shake the chains that held them down, to briefly, oh so briefly, emerge as a serious contender to lead the troops out of the smoke and back over the lines. With their debut, "Cycles", in 1995 for legendary Belgium label Mausoleum Records, Wicked Maraya really showed off a spark of intelligent, thought provoking heaviness. Never one to thrash and mad dash all over the place, Wicked Maraya displayed a mid-tempo power crunch led by the powerful pipes of Lou Falco, an amazing singer that I still admire to this day. I could never quite put my finger on anyone he could compare too, but at times he seemed to be a bit European in his delivery. Nevertheless the wicked ones amazed a small US following, those unaware that heavy hard rock had been killed off by the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. "Cycles" was a fantastic debut and a clever way to adopt a modern hard rock feel into a heavy flow of emotion and anger.

After the release of "Cycles" the band made a small change, dropping the Wicked from their name to simply go by Maraya. Not sure why the change was made, maybe to cater to a more mainstream audience, perhaps to drop the sinister prefix and go for a younger crowd. Their sophomore album was released by Rising Sun, a Euro label that specialized in a lot of melodic hard rock at the time. 1996's "No Hope For Humanity" was indeed a different sort of step for the band, not quite as heavy as the debut but still very crunchy and powerful. At times the band seemed to border on the same stylings as Led Zeppelin, just driven a notch up in terms of heaviness and crunchy power numbers. The album didn't make many strides but still held some interest. I remember reading several positive reviews for the group around that time.

In '97 the band changed their whole persona, one that did not work out very well at all for me. At that time the metal community seemed to be drenching itself in a Marily Manson/N.I.N type of industrial clone. It would happen to W.A.S.P, Motley Crue, and Maraya. With their third album, "Counterculture", the group just went to far from their basic ideals. Leaning heavily on distorted riffs, loops, samples, and at times a wishy washy vocal performance from Falco. Who could really blame the group at that point, I would imagine the idea of just trying to survive weighed heavily on the band's mindset. After that '97 disaster the band just simply went away.

You guys know the drill by this time, here are the members in question...

Lou Falco - vocals
Dan Malsch - guitars
John Iadevaio - bass
Mike Nack - drums

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Update: Within a week of putting this up, we got this response in our email: "Thank you very much for the praise and concern for the whereabouts of WICKED MARAYA... By the way, this is John Iadevaio the bassist. I am currently ATTEMPTING to join forces with the former members for the return of Cycles II...This will take much effort and would require the expertise of Producer/Engineer Jim Morris and the members of Maraya. Keep in touch and spread the word...

Update II: www.myspace.com/wickedmaraya


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