Forceful and heavy yet consistently melodic, Medication is a Los Angeles-based alternative rock combo that includes ex-members of Soulfly, Machine Head, dayinthelife, Skrew, Life of Agony, and Ugly Kid Joe. For all its intensity and aggression, the band is never without a strong sense of melody. Medication isn't the sort of alterna-rock outfit that believes in bombast for the sake of bombast; their songs tend to be hard-driving yet intricate. All five members of Medication, which formed in L.A. in the late '90s, have belonged to other alternative rock and/or alternative metal bands. Lead singer Whitfield Crane was with Life of Agony and Ugly Kid Joe, while guitarist B-Blunt is a graduate of dayinthelife and bassist Kyle Sanders is a former member of Piece Dog and Skrew. Guitarist Logan Mader and drummer Roy Rata Mayorga have both been with Soulfly; Mader is also a graduate of Machine Head and Mayorga belonged to a band called Thorn before he joined Soulfly in 1996. The ones who first got the ball rolling for Medication were Crane and Mader, who became friends in 1998 at Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest. At that point, Crane was still with Life of Agony, which, like Soulfly, was among the bands on the 1998 Ozzfest bill. When Crane's role as Life of Agony's lead singer ended in early 1999, he was ready to start a new band with Mader. Later that year, Crane and Mader joined forces with B-Blunt and Mayorga; with that four-man lineup in place, Medication (which was originally called the Pale Demons) played its first show at the Gig, a club on Hollywood's trendy Melrose Avenue. The thing that Medication lacked during its early months was a full-time bassist, but the band solved that problem after hiring Sanders at the recommendation of drummer Dan Richardson. Crane knew Richardson from Life of Agony, although the drummer had been with Pro-Pain before that. Sanders was still living in Atlanta when Richardson informed him that Medication was looking for a bassist; when Medication decided that Sanders was the man for the job, he moved to L.A. After playing the L.A./Hollywood club scene consistently in 2000, Medication went on a national tour in 2001. And in early 2002, the band signed with Spain's Locomotive Music, which had decided to open an L.A. office. Medication was Locomotive's first American signing; before Medication, the label was known for European acts such as Spain's Tierra Santa, the Netherlands' Elegy, and Finland's Lost in Tears. Locomotive released Medication's self-titled debut EP in the U.S. in early April 2002. ~ Alex Henderson, Rovi