Big Business is a two-piece band that mixes metal, grunge, and indie rock influences into a massive, hard-hitting sound that belies the fact that only two people are responsible for their Wall of Sound. Friends and sometimes collaborators with fellow alternative metal stalwarts the Melvins, Big Business are a bass-and-drums duo who use keyboards to carry their melodies instead of guitars, and their music has a sense of thematic grandeur that suits their monolithic approach. While Big Business added a guitarist for the albums Mind the Drift (2009) and Battlefields Forever (2013), with 2016's Command Your Weather, they were once again a duo and no less heavy for it. Big Business formed in Seattle in 2003, comprising two veterans from the local alternative metal scene: bassist and singer Jared Warren, formerly of Karp, and drummer Coady Willis, formerly of the Murder City Devils. After releasing a self-titled demo in 2004 on their own Wantage USA label, Big Business signed with the indie Hydra Head Industries label for their proper debut album, Head for the Shallow, in early 2005. After touring in support of the album, Willis and Warren relocated from Seattle to Los Angeles in early 2006. Later that year at the invitation of fellow Pacific Northwest transplant Dale Crover, Willis and Warren became the rhythm section of Crover's long-running sludge metal act the Melvins, starting with the album A Senile Animal. For that release's tour, Big Business performed an opening set on their own, followed by a set backing Crover. The duo's second album, 2007's Here Come the Waterworks, featured a slightly wider range of influences and instrumental dynamics, including occasional bits of synth and guitar. Arriving in 2009, Mind the Drift saw the group morph into a trio with the addition of guitarist/keyboardist Toshi Kasai. The following year brought in another new player, guitarist Scott Martin, who would make his first studio appearance on 2013's Battlefields Forever. Kasai and Martin had dropped out of the group by the time Command Your Weather, the band's fourth studio long-player, dropped in 2016. Still a loud and proud duo, Big Business returned in 2019 with The Beast You Are. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi