Fozzy

Fozzy got going in Atlanta in 1999, when guitarist Rich Ward and drummer Frank Fontsere started a band that, at first, mostly played other people's songs. The first two albums lean heavily on covers with a few originals slipped in, but from there the balance flipped and Fozzy became a band that writes its own material. Chris Jericho has been out front on lead vocals since 1999, and he likes to pitch the band as the unholy offspring of Metallica and Journey, which is about as neat a summary as anyone could offer: heavy metal muscle with arena-rock choruses you can sing along to from the cheap seats.

Judas, from 2017, is the purest dose of that formula. The title track rides a chugging, stop-start riff into a hook built for fist-pumping, glossy and heavy at once. The lineup has shifted around Jericho and Ward over the years, with Billy Grey on second guitar, P. J. Farley on bass and Grant Brooks on drums in the current version, and the records have come out on Megaforce and Century Media. By September 2022 they had eight studio albums and a live album to their name.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.