"Headbangers Ball" slipped off the airwaves earlier this decade, but that hasn't deterred the mosh pit maestros in Skid Row from launching a comeback album due out this fall. |

Following the bitter departure of frontman Sebastian Bach in December, 1996, the band adopted the new moniker Ozone Monday and recruited former Mars Needs Women member Shawn McCabe to assume vocal responsibilities. Now, they have trimmed their matted locks and trashed all lingering leather prints, but the Skid Row survivors can't seem to shake their Metal Edge persona.

"The album's rock, but it's not heavy metal -- obviously," a spokeswoman for Ozone Monday told JAMTV on Wednesday.

Original Skid Row guitarists Scott Hill and Dave "The Snake" Sabo, bassist Rachel Bolan and drummer Rob Affuso have laid down 13 demo songs in New York with McCabe, and plan to scratch out four more soon. Though long-time producer Michael Wagener (Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Dokken) is helping with the demos, the band has not announced a full-time producer or engineer for the forthcoming disc.

Meanwhile, the sometimes vulgar and always controversial Bach is keeping out of trouble with an international tour that kicked off in the U.S. last month and hits the Jaxx club in Springfield, Va., tonight. On the road through next spring, "Baz" plans to record a solo disc on his independent label soon. Shortly after his break from Skid Row, Bach joined the kids from the wrong side of the tracks for the alternative supergroup Last Hard Men, which recorded a cover of Alice Cooper's "School's Out" for the Scream soundtrack. (Anni Layne)