Powerman 5000 have lined up a twenty-four-date trek behind their new album, Transform, released last week. The band opened for Stone Sour on a spring tour, but the summer dates will be the band's first headlining run with its new lineup. Bassist Siggy Siursen and drummer Adrian Ost were called in more than a year ago to replace the departed Dorian 27 and Al 3, who left the band after its 2001 album, Anyone for Doomsday?, was scrapped. Frontman Spider One and guitarists M.33 and Adam 12 remain in the fold.

Doomsday?, the album that was to be the follow-up to PM5K's 1999 breakthrough, Tonight the Stars Revolt!, was killed a week before its release in September 2001, because Spider One felt the group could make a better record. With the benefit of hindsight, the decision to shelve the album and record a new set of songs that would become Transform (a decision Spider One calls "a moment of pure instinct") might have saved the band. The CDs were printed, a bomb-filled video was shot and promotional posters for a tour that read "Doomsday in the USA coming to destroy your town" were printed; hardly the content of choice for an album to be released days after 9/11. "Put aside any element of personal reason for not putting that out," Spider One says, "but had we just gone ahead with it, we would have been dead. Do you think anybody's gonna hang that poster in their venue?"

In addition to the good fortune of pulling a Doomsday album during a doomsday month, Spider says the new Powerman is playing with a newfound enthusiasm. "We're playing with this fire that wasn't there or at least hadn't been in several years," Spider says of the new lineup. "When you get some new cats in the band, everything is exciting to them. They have something to prove and you can hear it. It's like a new band. We had to rebuilt a little bit, but at the end of the day I think we made a much better record and a record that feels like the right record."

In keeping with the theme of starting over and transforming, Powerman decided to pass on the summer's big-ticket hard rock fests. "We've done Ozzfest, we've done Summer Sanitarium," he says. "For better or worse, we're not part of one of those this year. We're gonna take it out and be the band that plays some smaller shows for cheap money. While everybody else is playing for $85 a ticket, we'll hopefully be there for $10 a ticket. Having been out of the scene for a couple of years, it's important for us to just play in front of 700 kids, some smaller shows, and rebuild that identity and trust with our core audience."

Powerman 5000 tour dates:

5/28: Boston, Avalon Ballroom
5/29: New York, Roseland Ballroom
5/30: Buffalo, Dunn Tire Park
5/31: Cleveland, The Odeon
6/4: Traverse City, MI, Streeters
6/5: Dayton, OH, Fusion
6/6: Flint, MI, Machine Shop
6/7: Grand Rapids, MI, The Orbit Room
6/9: Cincinnati, Bogarts
6/10: Ft. Wayne, IN, Pieres
6/12: Pittsburgh, Metropol
6/13: Hersey, PA, Shakeys
6/14: Clifton Park, NY, Northern Lights
6/16: State College, PA, Crowbar
6/19: Hampton Beach, NH, Hampton Beach Casino
6/20: Hyannis, MA, Pufferbellies
6/21: George, WA, The Gorge
6/29: Milwaukee, Summerfest

ANDREW DANSBY
(May 28, 2003)