Veteran rocker Michael Angelo leads his latest expolsive band, C4

C4, by definition, is a highly volatile plastic explosive. No wonder Michael Angelo decided to name his band after it. C4 is an in-your-face, hard-rocking, axe-grinding music explosion ready to take listeners by storm and assault the pretty boy, made-for-MTV, Madison Avenue rockers that grace TRL.\nListening to C4, you might think they've been rocking in their parent's' garages since they were in high school, but they band only formed in 2000.\n"C4 was originally formed to replay older, unreleased material," Angelo says. But once Angelo noticed lead singer Dan Lenegar's ability and talent for reaching a crowd, he quickly realized this band had more potential. \n"Something that started out as a project, ended up becoming a band." he says.\nAngelo has absolutely no intention of being a flash in the pan with C4. Angelo himself has been signed to two major record labels and started his own record label, Michael Angelo Creative Enterprise, or M.A.C.E. Music. He has produced over 20 albums and has over 60 available through his company. \nFrom instructional videos to the band Nitro, Angelo has worked his way around the music business for years. Angelo started playing piano at five and picked up the guitar at the age of 10 before earning a B.A. in Music Theory and Composition from Northeastern Illinois University. Angelo's first break came with the band Holland when they toured with Aerosmith. Later Angelo joined Nitro, whose album O.F.R earned the band hosting duties for a session of MTV's "Headbanger's Ball." Since then Angelo has kept busy with his own albums and a series of best-selling instructional guitar videos. Last year, Angelo released his own invention -- the double guitar. Connected in the middle, one guitar is played with the right hand, while the left hand simultaneously plays the other. \nC4's music genre varies depending on what they play, and it shows on their recently released debut album, Call to Arms.\n"The heavy ballad 'Spinning Room' tells the story of a guy and girl and how they live in their own world and everything within it spins around them," Angelo says. \nThen there is the extraordinarily heavy "Smart Bomb," which, while the title may elicit queasy post-Sept. 11 feelings, Angelo insists "...it is simply about payback, a revenge type song." The grinder song "Let Me Feel Your Body" (title self-explanatory) has a groove to it not normally found in heavy rock songs. \nAngelo, over the course of the years, has proved to be more than just another musician with a catchy name and long black hair. He's been playing music seriously since the late '80s and has constantly taken his abilities to the next level. He plans to do the same with C4. \n"I hope to bump C4 and M.A.C.E. Music up to the next level," Angelo says. With an album due out in late August/early September and live performances at clubs and bars around the country, Angelo and C4 are making their music hard to ignore.